The status of knowledge about the unconscious: about the specifics of the psychoanalytic object. Unconscious knowledge Scientific knowledge of the secrets of the unconscious
("PASSIONS OF THE WESTERN MIND")
When Nietzsche declared in the 20th century that there are no facts - only interpretations exist, he simultaneously summed up the entire critical philosophy inherited from the 18th century and pointed to the promising tasks of depth psychology in the 20th century. The idea that some unconscious element of consciousness has a decisive influence on human perception, cognition and behavior has long made its way into Western thought, but it was Freud who was destined to make it the center of attention and the subject of modern intellectual interests. Freud had a surprisingly multifaceted role in the unfolding of the Copernican revolution. On the one hand, as stated in the famous passage at the end of the eighteenth of his “Introductory Lectures,” psychoanalysis served as the third sensitive blow to man’s naive pride (the first blow was the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, the second was Darwin’s theory of evolution). For psychoanalysis has compounded the earlier discoveries that the Earth is not the center of the Universe and man is not the center and crown of creation, with the new discovery that even the human mind, his "ego", his most precious sense, which allows him to consider himself a conscious and intelligent "I" - just a recent accretion, prematurely developed from the primeval element “it” and in no case even the master of its own house. Having made such an epoch-making discovery regarding the unconscious dominants of human experience, Freud took his rightful place in the Copernican “pedigree” of modern thought, which with each new “tribe” made the status of man more and more precarious. And again, like Copernicus and Kant, only on a completely new level, Freud came to the fundamental conclusion that the apparent reality of the objective world is determined by the unconscious of the subject.
However, Freud's insight also became a double-edged sword, and, in some very important sense, Freud's teaching marked a decisive turn in the trajectory of knowledge. For the discovery of the unconscious has destroyed the old boundaries of interpretation. As Descartes believed, and after him the British empiricists-Cartesians, the primary given in human experience is not the material world, not the sensory transformations of this world, but human experience itself; and psychoanalysis laid the foundation for the systematic study of the human soul - this receptacle of all experience and knowledge. From Descartes to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, and then Kant, the progress of epistemology increasingly depended on the analysis of the human mind and its role in the act of knowledge. In the light of the achievements of the path already traversed, as well as the further step taken by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others, the analytical task put forward by Freud gradually emerged. The modern psychological imperative to reveal the unconscious coincided exactly with the modern epistemological imperative to discover the root principles of psychic organization.
However, while Freud highlighted the problem, Jung saw the most important philosophical consequences that resulted from the discoveries of depth psychology. This was partly because Jung was more sophisticated in epistemology than Freud, since from his youth he was interested in Kant and critical philosophy (even in the 30s, Jung diligently read Karl Popper, which came as a surprise to many Jungians). In part, this is also due to the fact that Jung was less committed to 19th-century scientism than Freud. But above all, Jung had a much more open and deeper experience, which helped him discover the wide field in which depth psychology operated. As Joseph Campbell put it, Freud fished while sitting on a whale: he did not notice what was nearby. Of course, “big things are seen from a distance,” and we all depend on our successors, for only they can cross the chalk line we have drawn.
So, it was Jung who recognized that critical philosophy, in his own words, is “the mother of modern psychology.” Kant was right that human experience is not atomistic, as Hume believed, but, on the contrary, is permeated by a priori structures - and at the same time, the formulation that Kant gave these structures reflects his unconditional faith in Newtonian physics and is therefore inevitably narrow and simplifies a lot. In some ways, Kant's understanding of reason was limited by his bias in favor of Newton, just as Freud's understanding was limited by his bias in favor of Darwin. Jung, having experienced a more powerful influence of manifestations of the human psyche - both his own and others - followed the path indicated by Kant and Freud to the end, until he discovered in these searches his Holy Grail: these were universal archetypes, which in their power and complexity Diversity has always accompanied man, being decisive in human experience.
Among Freud's discoveries are the Oedipus complex, Id and Superego ("It" and "Super-Ego"), Eros and Thanatos (Love and Death): he recognized instincts mainly in the form of archetypes. However, at the sharpest turns he misfired, as the dust of reductionist tension clouded his eyes. With the advent of Jung, the symbolic ambiguity of archetypes was revealed to the world in its entirety, and the river of Freud’s “personal unconscious,” which contained mainly repressed impulses caused by various life traumas and the ego’s struggle with instincts, finally poured into the ocean of the collective unconscious, dominated by archetypes that are not as much the result of suppression as the original foundation of the soul itself. Consistently unveiling the unconscious, depth psychology has re-formulated this epistemological riddle, first recognized by Kant; If Freud approached it biasedly and myopically, Jung managed to achieve an incomparably more conscious and comprehensive comprehension.
But what is the real nature of these archetypes, what is this collective unconscious and what is their impact on the modern scientific worldview? Although Jung's theory of archetypes greatly enriched and deepened our modern understanding of the psyche, in some respects it could only be seen as a reinforcement of Kantian epistemological alienation. Over the years, Jung, demonstrating loyalty to Kant, repeatedly emphasized that the discovery of archetypes is the result of an empirical study of psychological phenomena and, therefore, does not necessarily entail metaphysical conclusions. The study of the mind brings knowledge about the mind, not about the world outside the mind. And in this sense, archetypes are psychological, and therefore partly subjective. Like Kant's a priori formal categories, they structure human experience without providing the human mind with direct knowledge of a reality outside itself; they are inherited structures or dispositions that precede human experience and determine its character, but it cannot be said that they themselves are external to human consciousness. Perhaps they are just the distorting lenses that stand between the human mind and true knowledge of the world. Or perhaps they are just deep patterns of human projection.
But, of course, Jung's idea was much more complex, and over the course of a long and intense intellectual life, his concept of archetypes underwent significant evolution. The usual—still best known—idea of Jung's archetypes is based on Jung's writings dating back to the middle period of his work, when his worldview was still largely dominated by Cartesian-Kantian ideas regarding nature and its separation from the outside world. Meanwhile, in later works, namely in connection with the study of the principle of simultaneity, Jung began to move to a concept in which archetypes were considered as independent semantic models, probably inherent in both consciousness and matter, and giving them an internal structure: then there is this concept, as it were, nullifying the long-standing subject-object dichotomy of the New Age. In this interpretation, archetypes appear more mysterious than a priori categories: their ontological status is unclear, they are hardly reducible to any one dimension and rather resemble the original - Platonic and non-Platonic - ideas about archetypes. Some aspects of this late Jungian concept were taken up - not without brilliance and passion - by James Hillman and the school of archetypal psychology, who developed the "postmodern Jungian perspective; they recognized the primacy of the soul and imagination, as well as the irreducible psychic reality and the power of archetypes, however, unlike late Jung, in every possible way avoided any metaphysical or theological statements, preferring complete acceptance of the soul-psyche in all its endless richness and diversity.
However, the most significant, from an epistemological point of view, event in the recent history of depth psychology and the most important achievement in this entire field since the time of Freud and Jung were the works of Stanislav Grof, who over the past three decades not only substantiated the revolutionary psychodynamic theory, but also made several major conclusions that had great resonance in many other fields of knowledge, including philosophy. Surely many readers - especially in Europe and California - are familiar with Grof's works, nevertheless I will give a brief summary of them here. Grof began as a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, and initially the soil on which his ideas grew was the teachings of Freud and not Jung. However, fate decreed that his professional takeoff was his affirmation of Jung's views on archetypes at a new level, as well as their reduction into a harmonious synthesis with the Freudian biological-biographical perspective - however, this touched upon the deep layers of the psyche, about which Freud probably and had no idea.
The basis for Grof's discovery was his observations during psychoanalytic research: first in Prague, then in Maryland, at the National Institute of Mental Health, where subjects took a strong psychoactive substance, LSD, and a little later were exposed to a number of powerful non-narcotic therapeutic influences that released unconscious processes. Grof came to the conclusion that the subjects participating in these experiments strive to explore the unconscious, plunging each time to greater depths, and in the course of such research a consistent chain of sensations, marked by extreme complexity and tension, invariably arises. In the initial stages, subjects usually moved back into the past - to increasingly earlier experiences and life traumas, to the emergence of the Oedipus complex, to the basics of hygiene, to the earliest infant impressions, right up to the cradle - which, on the whole, developed into a quite clear, with point of view of Freudian psychoanalytic principles, the picture and, apparently, represented something like a laboratory confirmation of Freudian theories. However, further, after various complexes of memories were identified and collected together, the subjects invariably sought to move even further in the same direction in order to again “experience” the extremely intense process of biological birth.
Although this process took place on a clearly biological level, there was a distinct imprint of a certain archetypal series, stunning in its power and significance. Subjects reported that at this level the sensations had an intensity that exceeded all conceivable limits of possible experience. These sensations arose extremely chaotically, superimposing each other in a very complex way, but in this complex flow Grof managed to grasp a fairly clear sequence: the movement was directed from the initial state of undifferentiated unity with the mother’s womb - to the feeling of unexpected falling away and separation from the primary organic unity, to desperate - “not to the stomach, but to death” - the fight against convulsive contractions of the walls of the uterus and birth canal, and, finally, to the feeling of one’s complete destruction. This was followed almost immediately by a sudden feeling of absolute liberation, which was usually perceived as a physical birth, but also as a spiritual rebirth, the first and second being incomprehensibly and mysteriously connected.
It should be said here that for ten years I lived in Big Sur, California, where I managed scientific programs at the Esalen Institute, and over the years almost every type of therapy and personal transformation has gone through Esalen. In terms of therapeutic effectiveness, Grof’s method turned out to be stronger than others: none could stand comparison with it. However, the price had to be paid high, in a certain sense too high: a person relived his own birth, falling into the grip of a deep existential and spiritual crisis, accompanied by severe physical agony, an unbearable feeling of suffocation and pressure, an extreme narrowing of mental horizons, a feeling of hopeless alienation and extreme meaninglessness. life, the feeling of approaching irreversible madness, and, finally, the crushing blow of meeting death, when everything disappears - both physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually. However, when they brought together all the links in this long chain of experiences, the subjects invariably reported that they experienced an extraordinary expansion of horizons, a fundamental change in ideas about the nature of reality, a feeling of sudden awakening, a sense of their inextricable connection with the Universe, all of which was accompanied by a deep sense of psychological healing and spiritual liberation. A little later, in these and subsequent experiments, subjects reported that they had access to memories of prenatal, intrauterine existence, usually appearing closely associated with archetypal prototypes of paradise, a mystical union with nature, with a deity or with the Great Mother Goddess, with the dissolution of the “ego” in ecstatic union with the Universe, with immersion in the abyss of the transcendental One and other forms of mystical unifying sensation. Freud called the revelations, the appearance of which he observed at this level of perception, “oceanic feeling” - however, Freud attributed to it only the experiences of an infant experiencing a feeling of unity with his mother feeding him: this is, as it were, a weakened version of the spontaneously primitive undifferentiated consciousness in the intrauterine state .
In terms of psychotherapy, Grof discovered that the deepest source of all psychological symptoms and suffering lies far beneath layers of childhood trauma and other life events: the experience of birth itself, in which the experience of facing death is inextricably woven. If the experiment was successfully completed, the person’s long-standing psychoanalytic problems completely disappeared, including those symptoms and conditions that had previously stubbornly resisted any therapeutic influences. It should be emphasized here that this “perinatal” (that is, accompanying birth) chain of experiences, as a rule, was visible at several levels at once, but it almost always contained a tense somatic element. The physical catharsis that accompanied the re-experiencing of the birth trauma was unusually powerful: this pointed quite clearly to the reason for the comparative ineffectiveness of most psychoanalytic forms of therapy, based mainly on verbal influence and barely scratching the surface. The perinatal experiences identified by Grof were, on the contrary, pre-verbal, spontaneous. They appeared only when the ego's normal capacity for control was overcome, either through the use of some catalytic psychoactive substance or therapeutic technique, or through the involuntary power of the unconscious.
At the same time, these experiences turned out to be deeply archetypal in nature. In fact, having encountered this perinatal chain, the subjects began to constantly feel that nature itself - including the human body - is a vessel and container of the archetypal, that natural processes are archetypal processes: both Freud and Jung - only from different sides. In a sense, Grof's research more clearly delineated the biological origins of Jung's archetypes, while simultaneously more clearly delineating the archetypal origins of Freudian instincts. The collision of birth and death in this series seems to represent a certain point of intersection between different dimensions, where the biological meets the archetypal, the Freudian meets the Jungian, the biographical meets the collective, the personal meets the interpersonal, the body meets the spirit. Looking back at the evolution of psychoanalysis, it can be said that it gradually pushed Freud's biological-biographical perspective into earlier and earlier periods of individual human life - until, reaching the moment of birth, this strategy overturned Freud's edifice of orthodox reductionism and pointed to psychoanalytic ideas a new path towards a more complex and expanded ontology of human experience. As a result, an understanding of the psyche emerged that, like the experience of the perinatal chain itself, turned out to be irreducible and multidimensional.
Here we could discuss many of the discoveries generated by Grof's research: that the roots of male sexism lie in an unconscious fear of the female body doomed to childbirth; regarding the fact that the roots of the Oedipus complex lie in a much earlier, initial struggle against the contracting walls of the uterus and the suffocating birth canal (which is perceived as a kind of punitive act) in order to regain the lost union with the nurturing mother's womb; regarding the therapeutic significance of facing death; regarding the roots of such special psychopathological conditions as depression, phobias, obsessive-compulsive neurosis, sexual disorders, sadomasochism, mania, suicide, drug addiction, various psychotic states, as well as such collective psychological disorders as the thirst for destruction and war and totalitarianism. One could also discuss the magnificent, much clarifying synthesis that Grof achieved in his psychodynamic theory, bringing together not only the ideas of Freud and Jung, but also the ideas of Reich, Rank, Adler, Ferenczi, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erikson, Maslow, Perlza, Lena. However, we are concerned not with psychotherapy, but with philosophy, and if the field of perinatal research has become a decisive threshold for therapeutic transformation, then it has turned out to be no less important for philosophy and cultural studies. Therefore, when discussing this topic, I will limit myself only to those special conclusions and consequences that the current epistemological situation owes to Grof. In this context, certain generalizations made from clinical evidence are of particular importance.
First, the archetypal chain running through perinatal phenomena - from the womb, then in the birth canal and until birth itself - was felt primarily as a powerful dialectic; movement from the initial state of undifferentiated unity - to an unstable state of suppression, collision and contradiction, accompanied by a feeling of disunity, bifurcation and alienation, and, finally, movement through the stage of complete disappearance to an unexpected redemptive liberation, which brought both the overcoming and the completion of this intermediate alienated state, restoring the original unity, but at a completely new level, where all the achievements of the trajectory traveled were preserved.
Secondly, this archetypal dialectic was often experienced simultaneously both on the individual level and - even more palpably - on the collective level, so that the movement from original unity through alienation to liberating resolution was experienced as, for example, the evolution of an entire culture or humanity as a whole - not only as the birth of a specific child from a specific mother, but also as the birth of Homo sapiens from the bosom of nature. The personal and interpersonal are present here equally, being inextricably linked together, so that ontogeny not only repeats phylogeny, but, in a certain sense, “flows” into it, like a river.
And thirdly, this archetypal dialectic was experienced and recorded much more often in several dimensions at once - physical, psychological, intellectual, spiritual - than in any one of them, and sometimes they were all present simultaneously in some complex combination. As Grof has emphasized, the clinical evidence does not suggest that this perinatal chain should be reduced simply to birth trauma: rather, it appears that the biological process of birth itself is an expression of a more general, underlying archetypal process that can manifest itself in many dimensions. So:
From point of view physicists, the perinatal chain was experienced as a period of biological pregnancy and as birth, the movement taking place from a symbiotic union with the all-encompassing nurturing womb, through a gradual increase in complexity and isolation within this womb, to an encounter with the contractions of the womb, with birth canal, and finally to birth itself.
From point of view psychology, here there was a movement from the initial state of undifferentiated consciousness of the “before-I” to a state of increasing isolation and disunion of the “I” with the world, increasing existential alienation, and, finally, to a feeling of death of the “Ego”, followed by a psychological rebirth; often all this was associated with experience life path: from the womb of childhood - through the labors and torments of mature life and the suffocation of old age - to a meeting with death.
On religious level, this chain of experiences took on a great variety of guises, but mainly Judeo-Christian symbolism prevailed: movement from the primordial Garden of Eden, through the Fall, through exile into a world separated from the Divine, into a world of suffering and mortality, to the redemptive crucifixion and resurrection that brings with itself the reunification of the human with the Divine. At the individual level, the experience of this perinatal chain was strongly reminiscent of the initiations associated with death and rebirth of the ancient mystery religions (in fact, they apparently were largely identical).
Finally, on philosophical level, this experience was understandable, relatively speaking, in Neoplatonic-Hegelian-Nietzschean concepts, as a dialectical development from the initial archetypal Unity, through emanation into matter with increasing complexity, multiplicity and isolation, through a state of absolute alienation - the “death of God” as in Hegel’s , and in the Nietzschean sense - to a dramatic Aufhebung *, to synthesis and reunification with self-sufficient Being, in which the trajectory of the individual path both disappears and ends.
* Cancellation, abolition; completion. - German
This multi-level empirical chain is of great importance for many areas of knowledge, but here we should focus specifically on the epistemological conclusions that seem especially important for the modern intellectual situation. For the opening perspective creates the impression that the fundamental subject-object dichotomy that reigned in modern consciousness, which both determined and was the essence modern consciousness, and was taken as an absolute given and as the basis of any “realistic” view and the basis of alienation, - has its roots in a special archetypal state associated with the unhealed trauma of human birth, where the primordial consciousness of an undivided organic unity with the mother, or partipation mystique * nature, was repressed, opened up and lost. Both at the individual and collective levels, one can see here the source of the deepest bifurcation of modern thinking: between man and nature, between mind and matter, between “I” and the other, between experience and reality - this inescapable feeling of a lonely “ego” hopelessly lost in the thicket of the outside world surrounding him on all sides. Here is a painful disunity with the eternal and all-encompassing bosom of nature, and the development of human self-awareness, and the loss of connection with the fundamental principle of being, and expulsion from Eden, and entry into the dimension of time, history and matter, and the “disenchantment” of the cosmos, and a feeling of complete immersion in a hostile the world of impersonal forces. Here is the feeling of the Universe as something extremely indifferent, hostile, impenetrable. Here is a convulsive desire to break free from the power of nature, to subjugate and enslave natural forces, even to take revenge on nature. Here is the primitive fear of losing power and dominance, based on the all-consuming horror of imminent death, which inevitably accompanies the exit of the individual ego from its primary integrity. But what is strongest here is the deep sense of ontological and epistemological disunity between the human “I” and the world.
* Mysterious involvement. - fr.
This strong feeling of disunity is then elevated to the legitimate rank of the interpretive principle of modern thinking. It is no coincidence that Descartes, the man who first formulated the definition of the modern individual rational “I,” was the first to formulate the definition of the mechanistic Cosmos of the Copernican revolution. Basic a priori categories and premises modern science with its conviction that the independent external world must necessarily be subjected to investigation by the independent human mind, with its choice of impersonal mechanistic explanations, with its denial of spirituality in the Cosmos and any internal meaning or purpose in nature, with its demand for an unambiguous and literal interpretation of the world of phenomena - were the key to a worldview that was disappointed and alienated. As Hillman emphasized:
“The evidence we gather to support a hypothesis, and the rhetoric we use to prove it, are already part of the archetypal constellation within which we ourselves find ourselves... Thus the “objective” idea that we find in the arrangement of data is at the same time “subjective” "the idea through which we see this data."
From such positions, the Cartesian-Kantian philosophical ideas that reigned in modern thinking, filling and spurring modern scientific achievements, reflect the dominance of a certain powerful archetypal form (Gestalt), a certain empirical template, according to which human consciousness is “sifted” and then “sculpted” - and in this way in a way that results in reality appearing impenetrable, literal, objective and alien. The Cartesian-Kantian paradigm both expresses and affirms a state of consciousness in which the voice of the deep unifying principles of reality is systematically muffled, the world is deprived of its charms, and the human “ego” is left alone. Such a worldview represents, so to speak, a metaphysical and epistemological “box” - a hermetically sealed system that reflected the compression in the process of archetypal birth. This is nothing more than a deliberate and practiced expression of a special archetypal sphere within which human consciousness is securely locked - as if it existed inside some kind of solipsistic bubble.
Of course, there is a bitter irony in all this: after all, it is precisely when modern thinking, having finally believed that it has managed to completely free itself from all anthropomorphic projections, strenuously advocates a model of an unreasonable, mechanistic and impersonal world - precisely then it turns out that this world, more than ever, it represents the selective construction of the human mind. The human mind has eliminated any manifestations of consciousness everywhere, removed meaning and purpose from everywhere, declaring its exclusive right to them, and then projected a certain machine onto the world. As Rupert Sheldrake pointed out, this is the most anthropomorphic projection there is: a “man-made” machine assembled by man himself, a monster that does not exist in nature. In this case, what modern thought projected onto the world - or, more precisely, what it extracted from the world through its projection - turned out to be its own impersonal soullessness.
However, depth psychology - this extraordinarily prolific tradition founded by Freud and Jung - has had the difficult fate of providing modern thinking with access to archetypal forces and realities designed to reunite the separate “I” with the rest of the world, destroying the previous dualism of worldview. In fact, now, looking back, I would like to say that it was depth psychology was destined to bring modern thinking to the awareness of these realities: if philosophy, religion, and science belonging to high culture refused to recognize the kingdom of archetypes, then it had to appear again from below - from the “underworld” of the soul. As L.L. White noted, the idea of the subconscious first arose in the time of Descartes and since then, beginning its ascent to Freud, has played an increasingly prominent role. And when, at the dawn of the 20th century, Freud published his book “The Interpretation of Dreams,” he prefaced it with a line from Virgil as an epigraph, where everything was said so clearly: “Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo”*. Retribution will inevitably come - and if not from above, then from below.
* “The gods above are unable to soften the gods, I appeal to the underground.” - lat.
Thus, the modern state of consciousness begins as a Promethean movement towards the liberation of man, towards independence from the encompassing natural fundamental principle, towards isolation from the collective element, but this Cartesian-Kantian state gradually and irresistibly turns into a Kafkaesque-Beckettian state of complete existential loneliness and absurdity - unbearable " double knot" leading to destructive madness. And again, the existential “double knot” exactly reflects the position of the baby inside the mother’s womb: at first he is symbiotically connected with the womb that nourishes him, he grows and develops inside this womb, he is the beloved center of the all-encompassing world, and now he is suddenly expelled by this world, rejected by this womb, abandoned, crushed, suffocated and expelled, finding himself in a state of extreme confusion and mortal anxiety, in an inexplicable and incongruous position that leaves him in a traumatically high tension.
At the same time, the full experience of this “double knot,” this dialectic between unity, on the one hand, and birth pangs and subject-object dichotomy, on the other hand, unexpectedly gives rise to a third state: the redemptive reunion of the isolated “I” with the universal fundamental principle. The born child falls into the arms of his mother, the liberated hero ascends from the underworld to return home after his long odyssey. There is a reconciliation between the individual and the universal. Now it is clear: suffering, alienation and death are necessary for birth, for the creation of the “I”: O Felix Cupla *. A situation that previously seemed completely incomprehensible is now recognized as a necessary link in the chain, since its wider context is more than clear. The wound from the break with Being is healed. The world begins to open up again, taking on its pristine charm. The formation of a separate independent “I” has already been accomplished, and now the “I” has again returned to the origins of its existence.
· O happy wine; oh blessed sin. - lat.
Translation by T.A. Azarkovich
http://psylib.org.ua/books/tarna 01/txt 12.htm #2
Consciousness is everything that we comprehend and control. The unconscious is not realized and is not subject to control, but on the contrary, it itself influences us. Flashes of intuition and insight, discoveries, creativity and inspiration, the creation of something new, a sudden solution to an important and long-resisting task - all these are manifestations of the unconscious.
But early childhood impressions, fears, doubts and insecurities are also there. And also reflexes and instincts, unconscious sensations, such as a sense of balance or familiar sounds, images that we do not notice, but to which we react. They break into consciousness through dreams, obsessive thoughts, slips of the tongue and slips of the tongue, illnesses and pains, unconscious remembering or forgetting, vague urges to do something without a clear awareness of the purpose of these actions.
This is how the connection between consciousness and the unconscious is manifested, and today not a single teaching in psychology questions it. Both spheres are closely intertwined, influencing both the person and each other. Thanks to this connection, the area of the unconscious can open up to a person and it becomes clear what internal forces and motivations are hidden behind the threshold of his consciousness and control his thoughts and actions.
Knowing this, you can build your life much more effectively: trust the voice of your intuition, open up to creativity and creation, work through repressed desires and hidden fears. This will require deep self-knowledge and introspection, but understanding yourself is important in order to grow, develop, and achieve greater goals.
The role of the unconscious in the life of a subject is unequal. It can be a carrier not only of negative tendencies, which is usually exaggerated by the metaphysical discourse of thinking, which interprets it as a dark, destructive principle of human nature. The unconscious is also the embodiment of creative possibilities, saves consciousness from overload, from a huge flow of information, and helps regulate a person’s relationship with reality.
The source of the unconscious, as well as the conscious, is practice, for a particular person - his life experience, as a result of familiarization with the cultural and historical heritage of civilization. It is practice that is the connecting link between the conscious and the unconscious, both individual and social. The dialectic of the individual and the social in the content of the unconscious is based on the sociocultural determinants of human thinking and behavior, acquired by him in the process of socialization of the individual, involved in the cognitive process, but not fixed by the subject and expressed in language, categorical structure of thinking, paradigmatic attitudes, mental techniques, methods of cognition and other things
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Abstract.
Nemov R.S. Psychology.
1) Definition of consciousness.
2) The origin of consciousness.
3) The unconscious and its connection with consciousness.
The significant difference between a person as a species and a person is his ability to reason, reflect on his past and present, develop plans and programs for the future, have objective and stable knowledge about himself and the world, share this knowledge with other people, preserve and pass on from generation to generation. generation accumulated life experience. All this taken together is connected with the sphere of human consciousness. It, in turn, acts as the highest level of human knowledge of reality.
Throughout the history of psychological science, consciousness has been recognized as an integral attribute of the human psyche and, at the same time, it has been the most difficult problem for scientific research. The main questions related to understanding the nature and origin of consciousness can be formulated as follows.
What is consciousness as a mental phenomenon?
How does consciousness differ from other mental phenomena?
What is included in the structure of consciousness?
How did human consciousness arise and develop?
What changes in a person’s psyche when he gains or, on the contrary, temporarily loses
What are the anatomical and physiological basis? How is it related to brain function?
Do animals have consciousness?
In fact, science still does not have completely satisfactory and comprehensive answers to any of these questions. Nevertheless, scientists continue their search, and the material contained in this chapter represents the results of their reflections on the topic of human consciousness and research into it.
Consciousness can be defined as a mental state of a person, being in which, he can perceive the world around him in the form of sensory sensations and images, remember, store information about this world in his memory, recall it at the right moment, reason, use speech, perceive and influence on the people around you, communicate with them. Even from this more everyday than scientifically precise definition of consciousness, it follows that it is an extremely complex mental phenomenon. It has always been associated with reflexive ability, i.e. a person’s ability to understand himself, his psyche. Without reflection, a person could not even have the idea that he exists, that he has a psyche. Socrates’ famous saying “I think, therefore I exist” directly indicates that in order to realize oneself as an objectively existing person, first of all, one must understand that he is thinking, and this means reflexive awareness of oneself as a thinking being.
A person’s feeling of being a subject cognizing the world means that he must recognize himself as a being capable and ready to cognize the world and obtain reliable knowledge about it. A person in his consciousness has this knowledge as subjective phenomena, different from the objects that they reflect.
Consciousness is closely related to the human will. We speak of conscious regulation of mental phenomena and human behavior when they are generated and changed due to his own volitional efforts. It is no coincidence that in old psychology textbooks published before the middle of the 20th century, the topics “Consciousness” and “Will” always coexisted with each other and, as a rule, were discussed together.
The idea of something that is absent at a given moment in time or does not exist at all in nature (imagination, daydreams, daydreams) also acts as one of the most important psychological characteristics of consciousness. In this case, a person voluntarily, distracted from the perception of the surrounding reality, from extraneous thoughts and experiences, focuses his attention on some idea, image, concept, developing them in his imagination (imagines or ponders something that at a given moment in time he does not directly perceives, unable to see for the simple reason that it does not actually exist).
Consciousness is closely related to speech and in its highest manifestations also cannot exist without speech. In contrast to sensations and perception, ideas and memory, a person’s highest, conscious reflection of reality is characterized by a number of specific features. One of them is the meaningfulness of what is being realized, its verbal and conceptual certainty, endowed with meanings and meanings correlated with human culture. Another important property of consciousness is that it reflects not random, but only the basic, main and essential characteristics of objects, events and phenomena, that is, what distinguishes them from other objects and phenomena that are externally similar to them.
Another feature of human consciousness is the presence in it of so-called intellectual circuits. Let us recall that a schema is a mental structure in accordance with which a person perceives, processes and stores information about the world around him and about himself. Intellectual circuits include logical operations used by people to put the information they have in order, including selection, classification of knowledge, and assigning it to one category or another. Logical operations of thinking and methods of reasoning are also schemes included in the structure of consciousness.
Not all scientists agree with this interpretation of the schemes. Some of them believe that schemas are something that exists and operates on a subconscious level. The following can be objected to supporters of this point of view. Thinking patterns are ways of processing information that allow one to obtain reliable knowledge. It is unlikely that such knowledge can be obtained without awareness of it. Once upon a time, thinking patterns were realized and comprehended by people and became part of the content of their thinking. From the corresponding schemes, over time, the correct ones were selected, allowing one to obtain reliable knowledge. It is quite difficult to imagine this entire process as occurring solely on an unconscious level. The fact that many of the schemes used by modern man are not conscious of him does not at all indicate the unconscious nature of the schemes themselves. In the same way, a person is not aware, for example, of complex movements that he has mastered well, which were once mastered and probably consciously controlled by a person.
By consciously exchanging various information with each other, people highlight the main thing in what is communicated and perceived. This is how abstraction occurs, i.e., the distraction of a thinking person’s attention from everything unimportant, and the concentration of his consciousness on the main, most essential. Being deposited in a person’s consciousness in conceptual form, this main thing then becomes the property of not only the individual, but also the collective consciousness. Collective, accordingly, is the consciousness of groups or masses of people, which in its basic characteristics is similar to individual consciousness, except that it is deeper and broader than any individual consciousness.
People, or masses of people, almost always know more than any one individual. The content of collective consciousness is reflected in the objects of all human material and spiritual culture. The presence of collective consciousness is a condition for the emergence and development of each individual consciousness. A growing person gradually becomes familiar with the collective consciousness and partially masters it. And if, in addition, he is also engaged in creativity, that is, he himself creates new objects of material and spiritual culture, he can make his own contribution to the development of collective consciousness.
Language and speech, as mentioned in the previous chapter, form in a person two different layers of individual consciousness that are interconnected in origin and functioning: a system of meanings and a set of meanings. They were identified and considered by A. N. Leontyev as the main components of individual consciousness. Scientific consciousness includes a set of precisely defined and recognized by scientists meanings of words. The so-called everyday consciousness can include anything, and not necessarily something that really exists and is recognized. Human consciousness exists not only in verbal, but also in figurative form. The most striking example of figurative consciousness is art, theater, rituals, cults, literature, music, etc.
The question of how human consciousness differs from other mental phenomena cannot be answered unambiguously and simply. This is due to for the following reasons. Firstly, a person’s sensations, images, thoughts, experiences can be part of the structure of his consciousness, which means that consciousness can include all phenomena associated with mental processes: sensations, perception, attention, memory, imagination, thinking and speech .
True, many modern psychologists they say that the corresponding processes are included in the structure of consciousness, but are not included in processes that can occur at an unconscious level (we will see later that practically all cognitive processes without exception can become such). In addition, consciousness is both a cognitive process and a person’s mental state. In this regard, there is a need to clarify the difference between consciousness not only from other mental processes, but also from other mental states a person, for example, from states of attention or from emotional states. At the same time, it is clear that both attention (for example, voluntary) and emotions (for example, feelings) can be included in the structure of consciousness.
The only statement regarding consciousness that can be considered justified is the following: consciousness includes all mental phenomena, except unconscious ones. However, the very definition of what constitutes the unconscious is no less difficult than the understanding of consciousness, and this makes the previous statement uncertain. Finally, consciousness itself, even if we separate it from the known unconscious, is not a single phenomenon in its structure. At least three levels can be distinguished in it: semi-consciousness, ordinary consciousness and apperception.
Half-consciousness is a state in which a person can perceive the world around him, be aware of his sensations, and also be partially aware of what is happening now to him and around him, but does not have a sufficiently clear idea about all this, and most importantly, is unable control what is happening and your own behavior at a given time. In other words, being in a state of semi-consciousness, a person is, as it were, deprived of will, and partly of reason: he cannot make the right decisions, practically and consistently act in accordance with them. Examples of states of semi-consciousness are the state of hypnosis, those moments in time when a person falls asleep or wakes up, as well as those states when a person is under the influence of strong psychotropic substances, such as drugs or alcohol.
Ordinary consciousness is the state in which the majority of completely normal, healthy people find themselves most of the time every day during their waking moments. While in this state, a person has a will, behaves intelligently, can control his behavior and be responsible for his actions.
Apperception refers to states of consciousness of a special degree of clarity in which a person finds himself from time to time - most often when he physically and psychologically feels especially good, focuses his attention on something (they say that what appears at a given moment in time in center of his attention, enters the “apperceptive circle” of his consciousness). At these moments, a person especially clearly perceives and understands what is happening to him and around him, and finds solutions to the most complex issues, including those that he had previously pondered for a long time and unsuccessfully. All people can find themselves in this state of apperception from time to time, but creatively thinking people (state of inspiration) find themselves in it especially often.
In connection with the above, the question of the content of consciousness must be resolved, taking into account the existence of this state at three levels, and depending on which of these levels is considered, the content of consciousness may turn out to be different. However, in any case, the structure of consciousness will certainly include what is associated with the mind and will of a person. In relation to the rest of the psyche, this question is resolved as follows: everything that definitely belongs to the unconscious cannot be part of consciousness; everything else may or may not be included in the content of consciousness depending on a number of circumstances, including the level of regulation of the psyche and behavior under consideration, the significance of the corresponding content for a person, his mental or physical state at a given moment in time.
Origin of consciousness
Human consciousness arose and developed during the historical period of its existence, and the history of the formation of consciousness probably does not go beyond several tens of thousands of years. The main condition for the emergence and development of human consciousness was probably the joint, productive activity of ancient people, mediated by communication and associated with the manufacture and use of tools. This is an activity that requires division of labor and cooperation, communication and interaction of people with each other. It involves the creation, through the collective efforts of people, of a product that individual people are not able to obtain (for example, collective defense, collective hunting, collective labor).
In order to engage in a common cause together, people had to clearly understand the purpose of the joint activity, their individual role in it, the functions of other participants in the collective activity, and, in addition, coordinate their actions with each other. This is possible only if two conditions are present: language as a means of communication and division of labor. Before becoming the property of individual consciousness, the word and the content associated with it had to acquire general meaning for the people who use them. This is what happens in joint activities. Having received its generally accepted meaning, the word then penetrates into the individual consciousness and ultimately becomes its own property in the form of meaning. As this word is used in a person’s individual experience, it additionally “acquires” a meaning characteristic of that particular person. Therefore, at first there must be some semblance of collective consciousness, so that individual consciousness can then arise and develop on its basis. This sequence of formation of consciousness is apparently characteristic of both phylogenesis and ontogenesis.
The productive, creative nature of activity is especially important for the development of human consciousness. Consciousness presupposes a person’s awareness not only of the external world, but also of himself, his sensations, images, ideas and feelings. There is no other way for a person to realize all this, except for gaining the opportunity to “see” his own psychology, objectified in creations. Images, thoughts, ideas and feelings of people are embodied in the material objects and ideal objects they create, such as concepts, ideas, opinions, concepts, theories, etc. With the subsequent perception or mastery of these “objects,” the individual consciousness of people, including those who created these objects, develops. Therefore, creativity is the path and means of self-knowledge and development of human consciousness through the perception of one’s own creations.
At the beginning of its development, human consciousness is directed towards the external world. A person is aware of what is outside of him, thanks to the senses given to him by nature, he sees, perceives this world as separate from him and existing independently of him. Later, the reflexive ability appears, and with it comes the realization that a person himself can and should become an object of knowledge for himself. This is the sequence of development of consciousness in phylogenesis and centuries. ontogeny. This direction in the development of consciousness can thus be designated as reflexive.
The second direction is associated with the development of human thinking and the gradual connection of his thoughts with words. Human thinking, as it develops, penetrates more and more into the essence of things. In parallel with this, the language used to denote and preserve the acquired knowledge is developing. The words of a language, as they are filled with knowledge, are enriched in their content, and when science finally develops, they turn into scientific concepts. The word-concept is the basic unit of consciousness, and the direction in which it arises and develops can be designated as conceptual.
Each new historical era is uniquely reflected in the consciousness of its contemporaries, and with changes in the historical conditions of people’s existence, their collective consciousness also changes. The phylogeny of its development can thus be presented in a historical context. But the same is true with regard to the development of human consciousness in ontogenesis, if, thanks to cultural works created by people, the individual penetrates deeper and deeper into the psychology of the people who lived before him. This direction in the development of consciousness can be designated as historical.
At this point in time, people's consciousness continues to develop, and this development appears to be accelerating due to the pace of scientific, cultural and technological progress. This conclusion can be made based on the fact that all the processes described above as the main directions of transformation of consciousness exist and are intensifying. The main direction for the further development of human consciousness is the expansion of the sphere of what a person is aware of in himself and in the world around him. This, in turn, is connected with the improvement of the means of material and spiritual production, with the ongoing socio-economic revolution throughout the world, which over time will have to develop into a cultural and moral one.
We are already noticing the first signs of such a transition. This is an increase in the economic well-being of different peoples and countries, a change in their ideology and politics both in the international and domestic arena, a decrease in interstate military confrontation, and an increase in the importance of religious, cultural and moral values in the communication of people with each other. A parallel course is the penetration of man into the secrets of life, the macro- and microworld. Thanks to the successes of science, the sphere of human knowledge and control, power over oneself and the world is expanding, creative capabilities and, accordingly, people’s consciousness are significantly improving.
Everything that we have discussed so far has concerned the development of consciousness as a whole. However, it has a very important part, which is called self-awareness and has its own laws of formation and development. The structure of self-awareness includes a person’s idea of himself, his image of “I,” self-esteem, including the assessment of his mental processes, states, properties and behavior. The process of formation and development of human self-awareness can be represented as follows.
The first signs of self-awareness appear in a child in the second year of life, when it becomes obvious that he psychologically separates himself not only from the world around him, but also from other people. At this time, the pronoun “I” appears in the child’s vocabulary, which indicates the beginning of the formation of the image of “I” in the child. The first part of its structure includes self-esteem, the presence of which can be detected already in the third year of life. If you ask a child of this age, for example, what kind of person you are: good or bad, then he can give a very definite answer to this question. The self-esteem of young children almost literally copies the assessments that the adults around him give him, and their judgments are the basis for the formation of the child’s idea of himself in life. early stages development of his self-awareness.
From the age of three to six to seven years, a child spends a lot of time in group games with peers, and at this time the sphere of his self-awareness expands due to the assessments he receives from other children. At the same time, the structure of self-awareness begins to include not only generalized, simple assessments such as “good” or “bad,” but also more differentiated self-assessments of various psychological personal properties, for example, abilities, needs, character, emotions.
When children enter school, they are involved in a new type of activity - educational, in which, in addition to the child’s personal characteristics, his cognitive processes begin to manifest themselves: attention, memory, imagination, thinking and speech. Through the assessments of teachers and parents, the child learns about how developed the corresponding mental processes are, and their assessments are included in the sphere of his self-awareness. In addition, when communicating with classmates, the child has the opportunity to compare himself with other children, and his self-esteem begins to be adjusted as a result of its comparison with the grades and self-esteem of other children.
The transition to adolescence is marked by significant changes in children's self-awareness. At this age, firstly, the reflexive ability appears and activates, allowing the child to engage in psychological introspection; secondly, self-improvement at a given age becomes one of the goals of his own development recognized by the child; thirdly, self-assessment and introspection are carried out by comparing oneself with some kind of ideal, borrowed from real life or from works of art.
The process of forming children's self-awareness at senior school age is completed. At this time, not only a stable self-esteem and image of the “I” are formed, but the image of the “I” itself is differentiated in its structure. It, for example, identifies such different substructures as the image of “I” for oneself, the image of “I” for others, the reflected image of “I” and other ideas about oneself. The image of “I” for oneself is how a person sees, perceives and evaluates himself. The image of “I” for others is how a given person is actually perceived and evaluated by others. The reflected image of “I” includes an idea of how a given person, in his own opinion, is evaluated by other people.
The unconscious and its connection with consciousness
Consciousness is not the only form of existence of mental phenomena. Not everything that is included in the structure of the psyche is actually realized by a person. In addition to consciousness or conscious mental phenomena, a person has what is called the unconscious. It can be defined as a set of phenomena described in psychological terms, but not actually recognized by a person or not realized at all. These are those phenomena that, in terms of the body’s accompanying reactions, correspond to known conscious mental phenomena and have exactly the same impact on behavior as conscious mental phenomena.
So understood, the unconscious is represented in almost all mental processes, properties and states of a person. There are, for example, unconscious sensations, which include subsensory sensations, such as sensations of balance, many sensations associated with the work of muscles and internal organs body, sensations that arise in a person in a dream under the influence of stimuli from the environment, etc. There are unconscious visual, auditory and other sensations that can be generated by stimuli whose magnitude has not reached a threshold value.
There are unconscious images associated with perception that occurs on a subconscious level. They manifest themselves, for example, in the well-known phenomena of “previously seen”, the essence of which is that when perceiving something a person has the feeling that he has already seen it somewhere, but is not able to remember where and when exactly. In this case, we can assume that once a person already had an unconscious perception, and the corresponding image was not only formed, but was remembered and preserved in the person’s memory on a subconscious level.
Unconscious memory is much of the information stored in our long-term and genetic memory. No person is able to say exactly what is actually stored in his long-term memory, if we mean its full capacity. From time to time, of course, he can remember something, but never, under any circumstances, is he able to fully remember and describe everything. Moreover, a person is not given the opportunity to know what his genetic memory stores and inherits. In addition, a person does not realize that his perception, attention, imagination, thinking and speech at every moment of time are controlled by memory, and this, in turn, is controlled by needs.
There is also an unconscious imagination. These are, in particular, hallucinations and dreams. Examples of unconscious thinking can be given. These include those processes that lead a person to unexpected conclusions and even discoveries. The fact of the existence of unconscious thinking was clearly established at the end of the 19th century. also by German psychologists, representatives Wurzburg school thinking. They drew attention to the fact that a person almost never realizes the most significant moments of his thinking, especially creative thinking, but nevertheless comes to the right decisions, which in turn are realized by him. Wurzburg psychologists called this process unconscious inference. Finally, unconscious speech definitely exists. This is, for example, a person’s inner speech, as well as speech spoken in a dream.
Z. Freud made a great contribution to the development of the problems of the unconscious in psychology. He made the unconscious the main thing in the human psyche, proving that it is it that controls human behavior, and not his consciousness. Freud extended the unconscious to the human personality, demonstrating that a person has unconscious motives for behavior. The unconscious in a person’s personality is his needs and drives, which, for example, manifest themselves in a variety of involuntary reactions and actions. These include errors related to speech (slips of the tongue, mishearings, misspellings); errors associated with memory (forgetting facts, names of events, promises, intentions, dreams, etc.).
Slips of the tongue, according to Freud, are unconsciously determined articulatory movements associated with a distortion of the sound basis and meaning of spoken words. Such distortions are not accidental. 3. Freud argued that they reveal motives, thoughts, and experiences hidden from human consciousness. Reservations arise from the collision of a person’s unconscious intentions, his other motives with a consciously set goal of behavior, which is in conflict with the ulterior motive. When the unconscious overcomes the conscious, a reservation arises. This is the psychological mechanism underlying all erroneous actions.
Forgetting names is another example of an unconscious process. Such forgetting is usually associated with some unpleasant feelings of the forgetter towards the person whose name he forgets, or these feelings are associated with some events associated with this person. Such forgetting usually occurs against the will of the speaker, and this situation is typical for most cases of forgetting names.
The content of dreams, according to Freud, is also associated with a person’s unconscious desires, feelings and intentions, his unsatisfied but important life needs. The explicit, conscious content of a dream does not always, with the exception of two cases, correspond to the hidden, unconscious intentions and goals of the person to whom the dream belongs. These two cases are children's dreams of preschoolers and infantile dreams of adults, which arose under the influence of the events of the past day immediately preceding sleep. In their plot and thematic content, dreams are almost always associated with unsatisfied desires and are a symbolic way of eliminating impulses that disrupt the normal juice, generated by these desires. In a dream, unmet needs receive hallucinatory realization. If the corresponding motives of behavior are unacceptable for a person, then their obvious manifestation even in a dream is blocked by internalized moral norms, the so-called censorship. The action of censorship distorts and confuses the content of dreams, making them illogical, strange and incomprehensible. Thanks to the unconscious shifting of emphasis, substitution and rearrangement of elements, the manifest content of dreams under the influence of censorship becomes completely different from the hidden thoughts of the dream. To decipher them, a special interpretation is required, which is proposed by psychoanalysis in the procedure of dream interpretation. Censorship itself acts as an unconscious psychological defense mechanism, which manifests itself in omissions, changes, and rearrangements of memory material, dreams or ideas. Subconscious thoughts, according to Freud, turn into visual images in dreams, so that in them we are dealing with an example of unconscious figurative thinking.
Unconscious mental phenomena, together with conscious phenomena, control human behavior, although they functional role different. Consciousness controls the most complex forms of behavior that require constant and increased attention. It is included in behavior regulation in the following cases:
a person faces unexpected, rather complex problems that have no obvious solution;
a person needs to overcome serious physical or psychological resistance to the movement of thought or behavior;
it is necessary to realize and find a way out of any conflict situation, which cannot be resolved by itself, without a strong-willed effort;
a person suddenly finds himself in a situation containing potential threat for him in case of failure to take immediate, urgent action;
a person is faced with a new task that he has never encountered before;
For some reason, habitual forms of behavior turn out to be inappropriate and do not give the desired result.
Situations of this kind (at least one of them) arise before a person almost continuously, therefore consciousness, as the highest level of mental regulation of behavior, is constantly present and functioning. Along with it, many behavioral acts are performed at the unconscious, preconscious or semi-conscious levels.
One of the possible solutions to the problem of the relationship between conscious and unconscious regulation of behavior was proposed by N.A. Bernstein, who expressed and substantiated the hypothesis about the multi-level dynamic regulation of human movements. This hypothesis can also be used in relation to the regulation of behavior in general. According to this hypothesis, consciousness and the unconscious are not antagonists, as Freud mistakenly believed, but different, mutually complementary levels of behavior regulation, which are activated depending on what problems arise in front of a person.
3. Freud contrasted the unconscious and conscious regulation of behavior with each other, presenting them in his works as opposite, incompatible parts of the human psyche. In the theory of personality, according to Freud, antagonism was initially laid between them, and this largely predetermined the formulation and solution of the question of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious in the regulation of the human psyche and behavior. The situation in resolving this issue was further complicated by the fact that the unconscious, when discussing it, was interpreted only according to Freud, and those who discussed this problem forgot that psychologists started talking about the unconscious at least a century before the appearance of the corresponding works of Freud and discussed this problem during Freud's life and after him in different ways, often in a completely different way. In the formulation of the question, which is characteristic of Freud's theory, there really cannot be any other solution to the problem of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, except for that proposed by Freud. However, for a different understanding of the nature of the unconscious, this is not so.
Studying the process of psychophysiological regulation of human movements, N.A. Bernstein came to the conclusion that depending on the nature of the movement (simple automatism or a new, complex movement being learned for the first time), it can be regulated at different levels. The author identified five such levels, approximately corresponding to the six levels of conscious and unconscious regulation of behavior that we identified (if we combine semi-consciousness and preconsciousness in our definition, then in general there will only be five levels of regulation corresponding to those identified by Bernstein), and showed that control movements can dynamically move from one level of regulation to another, including from conscious and unconscious regulation and vice versa. So in reality there is no antagonism or contradiction between these levels of behavior regulation; it is far-fetched.
At the same time, it should be recognized that the question of the relationship between conscious and unconscious levels of behavior regulation remains not fully resolved. The main reason for this is the fact that there are different types of unconscious mental phenomena that relate differently to consciousness. There are, for example, unconscious mental phenomena associated with the area of preconsciousness; there are unconscious mental phenomena called the subconscious; Finally, there are also known mental phenomena that can rightfully be called unconscious. Let's try to understand this issue, and then return to the discussion of the problem of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.
Preconsciousness is the area of the psyche where mental phenomena are located, which in themselves can soon become conscious to a person. For example, a person remembers something, and he has the feeling that he is about to remember exactly what he needs. This means that the material he recalls at a given moment in time is already in his preconscious. Let's take another example. When a person solves a problem using certain information well known to him, then at the moment of solving this problem the corresponding information is also in the sphere of his preconscious and can become available to the person at any time.
Unconscious is usually called something that a person is not aware of at a given moment in time and may not be aware of immediately or easily. For this, a person may need a lot of work to extract, for example, the necessary material from long-term memory and understand this material. The unconscious is something that, in principle, can be realized by a person. Finally, the unconscious is something that is never, under any circumstances, realized by a person.
Naturally, the question immediately arises: how can people know about the existence of such an unconscious? The fact that it is not realized by the person to whom it belongs does not mean that it is impossible to realize it. This, in principle, can be done, but only when conducting a special psychological study aimed at extracting it from the sphere of the unconscious and awareness. For this purpose, for example, psychoanalysis is used as a method of studying the unconscious in the human psyche.
Each of the above types of unconscious (in the broad sense of the word) phenomena can be differently associated with human behavior and its regulation. Preconsciousness is a normal link in the regulation of behavior, which is carried out at a semi-automatic level, under conditions of partial conscious control. These are, for example, well-mastered skills by a person. The unconscious is also normal, but a completely different level of regulation, dealing with various kinds of skills. The unconscious is most likely what is associated with the functioning of the human body. Everything associated with consciousness represents the highest, most complex or newly mastered forms of human behavior.
Related information.
Chapter 4. Psychoanalytic doctrine of the unconscious
Unconscious mental
There is an idea according to which psychoanalysis is primarily a study of the unconscious, and Freud is a scientist and doctor who first discovered the sphere of the unconscious and thereby accomplished the Copernican revolution in science and medicine. Such an idea, reflected primarily in everyday consciousness, is widespread, but very far from the true state of affairs.
The fact that Freud's teaching about the unconscious is an important, integral part of psychoanalysis is indisputable. But psychoanalysis is not limited to this teaching alone. The fact that Freud attached particular importance to the study of unconscious processes occurring in the depths of the human psyche is also no less indisputable. But he is not the pioneer of the sphere of the unconscious, as is sometimes believed by researchers inexperienced in the history of psychoanalysis or true psychoanalysts who are trying to defend Freud’s priority in this area.
A number of works devoted to the disclosure of ideas and concepts of psychoanalysis and published both in our country and abroad convincingly show that the palm in posing the problem of the unconscious does not belong to Freud. There are studies whose authors specifically examined the history of scientists’ approach to the problems of the unconscious, illuminating it using psychological, philosophical and natural science material.
In fact, the history of past thinkers turning to the problems of the unconscious goes back to ancient times. Thus, for some ancient Indian scientists, it was typical to recognize the existence of an “unreasonable soul”, “unreasonable life”, which proceeds in such a way that a person’s own feelings became beyond his control. The Bhagavad Gita, or Gita, which arose during the first millennium BC, contained the concept of a threefold division of the mind: the knowing mind, the miscognitive (passionate) and the shrouded in darkness (dark) mind. There was also an idea of “kama” as passion, lust, the basic principle of the human soul, unreasonable in its inner nature. The Vedic literature of the Upanishads spoke of “prana” - vital energy, which was initially unconscious. Buddhist teaching also proceeded from the recognition of the existence of unconscious life. Yoga assumed that in addition to the conscious mind there was an unconscious but “mentally active” region. The ancient Greek teachings contained ideas related to the problem of uncontrollable drives that go beyond the control of the individual and unconscious knowledge of a person. Plato, for example, spoke of a “wild, beast-like beginning” that can take a person anywhere.
From ancient times until the emergence of psychoanalysis, the problems of the unconscious were touched upon in one way or another in the works of many thinkers and scientists. Suffice it to say that ideas about the unconscious were contained, for example, in the works of such philosophers as Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and many others. Freud was familiar with some of the works of the above-mentioned philosophers and could well have drawn from these sources certain ideas about the unconscious, for example, from the works of Lipps, as already mentioned.
When considering the previous material, attention was drawn to the fact that in The Interpretation of Dreams Freud referred to Schopenhauer several times. In one place in this work, he emphasized that when understanding the nature of dreams, a number of authors adhered to the views of the German philosopher. At the same time, reproducing some of Schopenhauer's ideas, Freud wrote that irritations of the body from the outside, from the sympathetic nervous system, have an unconscious influence on our state of mind during the day.
It is difficult to say with certainty whether other statements of Schopenhauer that are directly related to the problem of the unconscious were deposited in Freud’s memory. For example, such a statement contained in the main work of the German philosopher “The World as Will and Idea” (1819), according to which unconsciousness is the natural state of things and, therefore, it is the basis from which, in certain kinds of beings, as the highest color her, consciousness grows. But it can be said with good reason that, in addition to the works of Lipps, Freud was familiar with literature that, to one degree or another, contained ideas about the unconscious.
In the second half of the 19th century, ideas about unconscious human activity, as they say, were in the air. As the English researcher L. White showed, in the period from 1872 to 1880, at least six scientific publications were published in English, French and German, the title of which included the term “unconscious”. However, even before 1872 there were works whose titles included this term. A typical example was the voluminous work of the German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann, “Philosophy of the Unconscious” (1869), which emphasized that woe to the person who, exaggerating the value of the conscious-reasonable and wanting exclusively to support its value, forcibly suppresses the unconscious.
Hartmann's work on the problems of the unconscious differed significantly from the works of other thinkers, which, although they contained ideas about the unconscious, nevertheless they did not receive a detailed justification. The German philosopher not only thoroughly discussed the problems of the unconscious, recognized the undoubted value of the unconscious for understanding human actions, but also tried to consider the pros and cons that it includes.
Having put forward arguments in favor of recognizing the unconscious, Hartmann noted the following advantages, which, in his opinion, determine the value of the unconscious.
First, the unconscious shapes the organism and maintains its life.
Secondly, as an instinct, the unconscious serves the purpose of self-preservation of the human being as such.
Thirdly, thanks to sexual attraction and maternal love, the unconscious not only preserves and supports human nature, but also ennobles it in the process of the history of the development of the human race.
Fourthly, as a kind of premonition, the unconscious guides a person, especially in those cases when his consciousness is unable to give any useful advice.
Fifthly, being an integral element of any inspiration, it contributes to the process of cognition and favors the revelation to which people sometimes come.
Sixthly, the unconscious is a stimulus for artistic creativity and gives a person pleasure when contemplating beauty.
Along with the undoubted advantages, Hartmann also drew attention to those obvious disadvantages that, in his opinion, are characteristic of the unconscious. First of all, guided by the unconscious, a person always wanders in the dark, not knowing where it will lead him. In addition, being under the influence of the unconscious, a person almost always depends on chance, since he does not know in advance whether inspiration will come to him or not. In fact, there are no reliable criteria for identifying inspiration, since only by the results of human activity can one judge their true value.
To this it should be added that, unlike consciousness, the unconscious seems to be something unknown, foggy, alien. Consciousness is a faithful servant, while the unconscious includes something terrible, demonic. One can be proud of conscious work, but unconscious activity can be perceived as some kind of divine gift. The unconscious is always, as it were, prepared, while consciousness can be changed depending on acquired knowledge and social conditions of life. Unconscious activity leads to ready-made results that cannot be perfected, but you can continue to work on the results of conscious activity, improve them, and improve your skills and abilities. And finally, a person’s unconscious activity depends entirely on his affects, passions and interests, while conscious activity is carried out on the basis of his will and reason and, therefore, this activity can be oriented in the direction he needs.
Freud read this work by Hartmann. In The Interpretation of Dreams he not only referred to his Philosophy of the Unconscious, but also cited an excerpt from this work. True, we were talking about the transfer of waking elements into the sleep state, and also about the fact that, according to Hartmann, scientific interest and aesthetic pleasure, which reconcile a person with life, do not seem to be transferred into a dream. However, it is unlikely that Freud did not pay attention to the German philosopher’s thoughts on the unconscious, including its positive and negative characteristics.
Be that as it may, it remains real fact that long before Freud, the problems of the unconscious came to the attention of various thinkers. Another thing is that, unlike the philosophy of the second half of the 19th century, ideas about man as a conscious being prevailed in science and medicine. IN best case scenario considerations have been made about unconscious physiological reactions. However, the psychology of human perception was mainly focused on viewing him as a reasonable, rational, conscious being.
The vast majority of psychologists of that period believed that the psyche and consciousness are one and the same. The idea of the identity of consciousness and psyche goes back deep into history, when consciousness was considered to be the distinguishing characteristic of a human being from an animal. In its deepest understanding, the idea of the identity of consciousness and psyche was reflected in the famous saying of the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I exist.” True, in his treatise “The Passions of the Soul” he wrote about the struggle between the lower, “feeling” and higher, “reasonable” parts of the soul. However, considering that the parts of the soul are practically no different from each other (“the feeling” part of the soul is at the same time “intelligent”, and unconscious movements relate only to the body), Descartes thereby, as it were, excluded the sphere of the unconscious from the human psyche.
Having become interested in the unconscious actions of people that Freud observed during experiments with hypnosis, and having adopted some ideas about the unconscious contained in philosophical works, he first of all questioned the widely accepted idea in science of the identity of consciousness and psyche. The fact is that if the mental was completely and completely correlated with the conscious, then in this case practically insoluble difficulties arose associated with the so-called psychophysical parallelism. The soul and body acted as spheres of man that were irreducible to each other, each of which had its own laws and, as it were, their separate processes proceeded parallel to each other. Unconscious movements and reactions related to the bodily organization of a person, conscious processes of thinking - to the human soul.
Freud opposed such ideas, according to which the human psyche is characterized exclusively by processes that, by definition, are conscious. He insisted that it would be more appropriate to recognize the presence in the human psyche of processes that are not only conscious. The division of the psyche into conscious and unconscious became the main premise of psychoanalysis. At the same time, Freud believed that considering the human psyche from the angle of the presence of unconscious and conscious processes in it, firstly, helps resolve the difficulties of psychophysical parallelism and, secondly, makes it possible to better explore and understand those pathological processes that sometimes arise in the mental life. Appealing to such arguments, he put forward an important theoretical position that the conscious is not the essence of the mental.
Speaking against the Cartesian understanding of the human psyche, Freud emphasized that the data of consciousness have various kinds of gaps that do not allow competent judgment of the processes that occur in the depths of the psyche. Both healthy people and patients often experience such mental acts, the explanation of which requires the assumption of the existence of mental processes that do not fit into the field of vision of consciousness. Therefore, Freud believed that it makes sense to admit the existence of the unconscious and work with it from the standpoint of science, thereby filling the gaps that inevitably exist when identifying the mental with the conscious. After all, such an identification is essentially conditional, unproven and seems no more legitimate than the hypothesis of the unconscious. Meanwhile, life experience and common sense indicate that identifying the psyche with consciousness turns out to be completely inappropriate. It is more reasonable to proceed from the assumption of the unconscious as a certain reality that must be taken into account, as long as we are talking about understanding the nature of the human psyche.
In his justification for the advisability of recognizing the unconscious, Freud polemicized with those theorists who rejected this concept, believing that it was enough to talk about various degrees consciousness. Indeed, late 19th-century philosophy and psychology often advocated the belief that consciousness can be characterized by certain shades of intensity and vividness. As a result, along with clearly conscious processes, one can observe states and processes that are not clear enough, hardly noticeable, not noticeable, but nevertheless present in consciousness itself. Those who held this point of view believed that there was no need to introduce the concept of the unconscious, since it was quite possible to get by with ideas about weakly conscious processes and not entirely clear states.
Freud did not share this view. Moreover, he considered it unacceptable. True, he was ready to admit that the theoretical positions defended in this way could be to some extent meaningful. However, in his opinion, these provisions are practically unsuitable, since equating subtle, imperceptible and not entirely clear processes with conscious, but insufficiently realized processes does not eliminate the difficulties associated with gaps in consciousness. It is more expedient, therefore, not to limit ourselves to relying on consciousness and to keep in mind that it does not cover the entire psyche.
Thus, Freud not only revised the previously existing conventional idea of the identity of consciousness and psyche, but also, in fact, abandoned it in favor of recognizing unconscious processes in the human psyche. Moreover, he not only drew attention to the need to take into account the unconscious as such, but put forward a hypothesis about the legitimacy of considering what he called unconscious mental. This was one of the advantages of the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious.
It cannot be said that it was Freud who introduced the concept of the unconscious mind. Before him, Hartmann distinguished between the physically, epistemologically, metaphysically and mentally unconscious. However, if the German philosopher limited himself to such a division, expressing very vague thoughts about the mentally unconscious and concentrating his efforts on understanding its epistemological and metaphysical aspects, then the founder of psychoanalysis put the unconscious mental at the center of his thoughts and research.
For Freud, the unconscious psyche acted as an acceptable hypothesis, thanks to which the prospect of studying the mental life of a person in all its completeness, inconsistency and drama opened up. In any case, he proceeded from the fact that considering the human psyche exclusively through the prism of consciousness leads to a distortion of the actual state of affairs, since in real life people quite often do not know what they are doing, do not realize deep-seated conflicts, and do not understand the true reasons for their behavior.
Ideas about the unconscious psyche were put forward by Freud in his first fundamental work, “The Interpretation of Dreams.” It was in it that he emphasized that careful observation of the mental life of neurotics and analysis of dreams provide irrefutable evidence of the presence of mental processes that occur without the participation of consciousness. As a matter of fact, recognition of the reality of the existence of unconscious mental processes is the area of mental activity where, as Freud put it, “the doctor and the philosopher enter into cooperation.” It is also due to the fact that both recognize unconscious mental processes as completely appropriate and legitimate.
Speaking about the collaboration between a doctor and a philosopher in the recognition of unconscious mental processes, Freud refers primarily to the similar ideas about the unconscious that he and Lipps had. We are talking about refusing to overestimate consciousness, which is a necessary prerequisite for a correct, from his point of view, understanding of the psyche as such. Lipps believed that the unconscious should form the basis for considering mental life. Freud believed that the unconscious includes the full value of mental action. This is where his idea of the psychic unconscious originates.
Thus, Freud's discovery of the unconscious mind was due to at least three factors:
- observations of neurotics;
- dream analysis;
¦ corresponding ideas of Lipps about the unconscious.
It must be said that the unconscious psyche was not for Freud something abstract, demonic, completely meaningless and elusive, which can act, at best, as an abstract concept used in the description of certain mental concepts. Like some philosophers who appealed to this concept, he was ready to recognize the heuristic significance of the unconscious. That is, he viewed it as a theoretical construct necessary for a better understanding and explanation of the human psyche. However, unlike those who saw in the unconscious only a theoretical construct that facilitates the establishment of logical connections between conscious processes and the deep structures of the psyche, Freud viewed the unconscious as something really mental, characterized by its own characteristics and having very specific meaningful implications. Based on this, within the framework of psychoanalysis, an attempt was made to comprehend the unconscious by identifying its meaningful characteristics and revealing the specifics of the course of unconscious processes.
The identification and description of unconscious processes formed an important part of Freud's research and therapeutic activities. However, he did not limit himself to this and subjected the unconscious to analytical dissection. Revealing the mechanisms of functioning of unconscious processes, identifying specific forms of manifestation of the unconscious psyche in human life, searching for its various components in the unconscious itself - all this was of significant interest to Freud. Moreover, he was not just interested in describing and revealing the unconscious as something negative, located outside consciousness, but sought to identify precisely the positive component of the unconscious mentality. He drew attention to those properties of the unconscious that testified to the originality and specificity of this sphere of the human psyche, which is qualitatively and meaningfully different from consciousness.
Turning to the study of the unconscious mind, Freud proceeded from the fact that any manifestation of the unconscious represents a valuable act of the human psyche. That is, an act that is endowed with a certain meaning. By meaning we did not mean the common idea of something that required abstract thoughts about life, fate or death. Meaning was understood as a very specific intention, tendency and a specific place among other mental phenomena. One of the important tasks of psychoanalysis was precisely to identify the meaning of unconscious processes, to reveal their meaning and semantic connections in a meaningful, positive way. It seems, despite various assessments of the unconscious in psychoanalysis as something negative, negative (psyche minus consciousness), it is more correct and correct to talk about the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious as a positive concept.
The study of the unconscious was carried out by Freud not in isolation, not by itself, but in the context of its relationship with consciousness. This was the usual path followed by those scientists who recognized the existence of the unconscious. However, Freud faced questions that required answers in the light of understanding the unconscious psyche.
For Freud, to be conscious is to have direct and reliable perception. But what can be said about perception in the realm of the unconscious? And here the founder of psychoanalysis compared the perception of consciousness of unconscious processes with the perception by the senses of the external world. Moreover, he proceeded from those clarifications that were once introduced by the German philosopher Kant into the understanding of this problem. Kant emphasized the subjective conditionality of human perception, the non-identity of perception with the perceivable, which cannot be known. Freud began to focus on the illegality of identifying the perception of consciousness with the unconscious mental processes that were the object of this consciousness.
The further development of Kant's ideas results in Freud's assertion that the unconscious mental should be recognized as something that really exists, but the perception of which by consciousness requires special efforts, technical procedures, and certain skills associated with the ability to interpret perceived phenomena. This means that psychoanalysis, in essence, deals with the unconscious in the human psyche, which is considered as a specific reality, regardless of whether this reality is real or imaginary.
Questioning the theory of seduction, Freud came to the conclusion that in the field of neuroses the defining moment is not reality as such, perceived as some kind of accomplished fact, but mental reality, which may border on fiction, imagination, but is nevertheless very effective In human life. Psychic reality is for the most part not the prerogative of consciousness. It is dominated by the unconscious mental, which does not always fall into the field of consciousness, but has a significant impact on human behavior. This unconscious psychic is by its nature neither passive nor inert. On the contrary, it is very effective, active and capable of bringing to life such internal processes and forces that can result in creative activity or turn out to be destructive both for the person himself and for the people around him.
Freud came to the idea of the effectiveness of the unconscious even before the basic ideas of psychoanalysis were formulated. The experiments conducted by the French physician I. Bernheim made him think about the fact that even something that is not conscious can be active and effective. Thus, Bernheim put a person into a hypnotic state and inspired him that, after time, he must definitely perform the action that was told to him. After leaving the hypnotic state, the person did not remember anything about what was suggested to him, but at a certain time he performed the corresponding action. At the same time, he did not understand at all why and why he was doing something. As soon as you asked him why he, for example, opened an umbrella, the person immediately found various kinds of explanations, although they in no way correlated with reality and did not justify his action.
From such an experiment it followed that much of the person remained unconscious. He did not remember what the experimenter suggested to him. He did not remember either the hypnotic state itself, or the influence on it from the experimenter, or the content of the action suggested to him. In the mind of a person, only the idea of a specific action surfaced, which he performed, without having the slightest idea about the reasons that forced him to do it. Therefore, he had an idea of action, which, although unconscious, was still active and ready for implementation. The unconscious psyche turned out to be endowed with an active principle.
If, according to Freud, it is the unconscious mental that is actually active, then how should one relate to traditional ideas about consciousness as a specific feature of a human being? And what, then, is the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious? Freud could not ignore these questions and tried to answer them in his own way.
Sayings
S. Freud: “The question of whether the psyche is identical to the conscious, or whether it is much broader, may seem like an empty play on words, but I dare to assure you that the recognition of the existence of unconscious mental processes leads to a completely new orientation in the world and science.”
Z. Freud: “The division of the psyche into the conscious and unconscious is the main premise of psychoanalysis, and only it makes it possible to understand and introduce to science the frequently observed and very important pathological processes in mental life.”
S. Freud: “Our unconscious is not exactly the same as the unconscious of philosophers, and besides, most philosophers do not want to know anything about the “psychic unconscious.”
Z. Freud: “The unconscious is a large circle that includes the smaller conscious; everything conscious has a preliminary unconscious stage, while the unconscious can remain at this stage and still claim the full value of mental action.”
Topics and dynamics of mental processes
First of all, the founder of psychoanalysis proceeded from the fact that every mental process exists first in the unconscious and only then can it appear in the sphere of consciousness. Moreover, the transition to consciousness is by no means a mandatory process, since, from Freud’s point of view, not all mental acts necessarily become conscious. Some, and perhaps many of them, remain in the unconscious, without finding possible ways to access consciousness.
Resorting to figurative thinking, Freud compared the sphere of the unconscious to a large hallway in which all mental movements are located, and consciousness to the adjacent narrow room, the salon. On the threshold between the hallway and the salon there is a guard on duty, who not only closely examines every mental movement, but also decides whether to let him through from one room to another or not. If any mental movement is allowed into the salon by the guard, this does not mean that it thereby necessarily becomes conscious. It becomes conscious only when it attracts the attention of the consciousness located at the back of the salon. Therefore, if the front room is the abode of the unconscious, then the salon is, in fact, the receptacle of what could be called the preconscious. And only behind it is located the cell of the conscious person, where, being in the outskirts of the salon, consciousness acts as an observer. This is one of the spatial, or, as Freud called it, topical, ideas about the unconscious and conscious in psychoanalysis.
The division of the psyche into conscious and unconscious was not Freud's own merit. The description of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious was also not something unusual, at least beyond the ideas of those, including Lipps, who believed that the mental could exist in the form of the unconscious. However, in comparison with his predecessors who paid attention to the unconscious as such, Freud especially emphasized the activity and effectiveness of the unconscious. This led to far-reaching consequences when unconscious processes began to be considered not so much in statics, but in dynamics. Psychoanalysis is precisely aimed at revealing the dynamics of the unfolding of unconscious processes in the human psyche.
But that is not all. The difference between the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious and its interpretations contained in previous philosophy and psychology was that Freud did not limit himself to considering the relationships between consciousness and the unconscious, but turned to the analysis of the unconscious mental to identify its possible components. At the same time, he discovered something new that was not the object of study in previous psychology. It consisted in the fact that the unconscious began to be considered from the point of view of the presence in it of components that are not reducible to each other, and most importantly - from the point of view of the functioning of various systems, in their totality making up the unconscious mental. As Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams, the unconscious is found to be a function of two separate systems.
In Freud's understanding, the unconscious is characterized by a certain duality, revealed not so much by describing unconscious processes as such, but by revealing the dynamics of their functioning in the human psyche. If in previous psychology the question of a double type of unconscious was not even raised, then for the founder of psychoanalysis, the recognition of the presence of two systems in the unconscious became the starting point for his further research and therapeutic activities.
The difference between the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious and its previous interpretations, including the corresponding ideas of Lipps, was that in the unconscious itself two streams of thoughts, two types of unconscious processes were identified. Understanding of clinical material, analysis of dreams and rethinking of ideas about the unconscious contained in philosophical and psychological works led Freud to the need to distinguish between preconscious And unconscious. But he did not limit himself to this and tried to understand in more detail the nature of the types of the unconscious he identified. The focus on in-depth research contributed to the emergence and development of new ideas that became an integral part of psychoanalysis.
In the course of uncovering the dynamics of mental processes that are not conscious, it was discovered what Freud called hidden, latent unconscious. This unconscious had characteristic features indicating its specificity. The main feature of this type of unconscious was that the idea, being conscious at one moment, ceased to be so at the next moment, but could become conscious again in the presence of certain conditions conducive to the transition of the unconscious into consciousness.
In addition, the dynamics of the development of mental processes, it turned out, made it possible to speak about the presence in the human psyche of some kind of counteracting force that prevents the penetration of unconscious ideas into consciousness. The state in which these ideas were before their awareness was called repression by Freud, and the force that contributes to the repression of these ideas was called resistance. Understanding both of these led him to the conclusion that the elimination of resistance is, in principle, possible, but it is feasible only on the basis of special procedures with the help of which the corresponding unconscious ideas can be brought to human consciousness.
All this contributed to the fact that in Freud’s understanding the unconscious appeared as two independent and not reducible mental processes. The first type of hidden, latent unconscious is what Freud called preconscious, second - repressed by the unconscious. The conceptual subtlety was that both were unconscious. But in the case of using the concept “preconscious” we were talking about the descriptive meaning of the unconscious psyche, while the “repressed unconscious” implied the dynamic aspect of the psyche. Ultimately, the traditional psychological division into consciousness and the unconscious was supplemented by a psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious psyche, in which not two, but three terms appeared: “conscious”, “preconscious” and “unconscious”.
The topical, that is, spatial, representation of the human psyche through the prism of the conscious, preconscious and unconscious contributed to a better understanding of the dynamics of the development of mental processes. However, in terms of terminology, not everything was as simple and clear as Freud would have liked. And indeed, in a descriptive sense, there were, as it were, two types of the unconscious - the preconscious and the repressed unconscious. From the point of view of the dynamics of the unfolding of mental processes, there is only one type of unconscious, namely the repressed unconscious.
The duality of the unconscious introduced by Freud sometimes creates confusion and uncertainty when revealing the specifics of the psychoanalytic understanding of the nature of unconscious processes. Such confusion and uncertainty occur not only in the amateurish perception of psychoanalysis, but also in psychoanalytic literature, where the meaning of the concept “unconscious” used by various authors is not always clarified. Freud himself made a distinction between the unconscious and the preconscious, between repressed and latent unconscious ideas.
Conceptual difficulties when considering the unconscious made themselves felt even during Freud's lifetime. He himself said that in some cases the difference between the preconscious and the unconscious could be neglected, while in other cases such a distinction seemed important and necessary. Moreover, feeling the need to clarify concepts, he also sought to show the differences between the unconscious in general as a descriptive concept and the repressed unconscious related to the dynamics of mental processes. It would seem that Freud managed to clarify the difference between the concepts he used when considering the unconscious mind. Nevertheless, some ambiguity and ambiguity remained, and some effort was required to avoid possible confusion. And if in the theory of psychoanalysis it was still possible to understand the conceptual subtleties associated with the use of the terms “preconscious”, “repressed” and “unconscious”, then in its practice such difficulties actually arose that not only could not be resolved, but were also not realized by the psychoanalysts themselves.
Sayings
S. Freud: “We are accustomed to think that every hidden thought is such due to its weakness and that it becomes conscious as soon as it acquires strength. But we are now convinced that there are hidden thoughts that do not penetrate consciousness, no matter how strong they are. Therefore, we propose to call the hidden thoughts of the first group preconscious, whereas the expression unconscious(in the narrow sense) save for the second group, which we observe in neuroses. Expression unconscious, which we have hitherto used only in a descriptive sense now takes on a broader meaning. It denotes not only hidden thoughts in general, but mainly those of a certain dynamic nature, namely those that are kept away from consciousness, despite their intensity and activity.
Z. Freud: “We see, however, that there are two types of unconscious: latent, but capable of becoming conscious, and repressed, which by itself and without further development cannot become conscious.”
Z. Freud: “The latent unconscious, which is such only in a descriptive, but not in a dynamic sense, is called by us preconscious; We apply the term “unconscious” only to the repressed dynamic unconscious.”
Z. Freud: ““Unconscious” is a purely descriptive, in some respects vague, so to speak, static term; “Repressed” is a dynamic word that takes into account the play of psychic forces...”
The polysemy of the unconscious
Freud's classical psychoanalysis was based mainly on the discovery of the characteristics and nature of one type of unconscious, namely the repressed unconscious. Strictly speaking, the practice of psychoanalysis is focused on identifying the patient’s resistance and that repressed unconscious, which was the result of repressing unconscious drives and desires from his consciousness and memory. Meanwhile, in theory, in psychoanalytic teaching, the “repressed” was only part of the unconscious psyche and did not completely cover it.
Contradictions between the theory and practice of psychoanalysis cause constant discussions and debates among modern psychoanalysts. They are conducted on a variety of issues - the interpretation of dreams, the role of sexuality and the Oedipus complex in the formation of neuroses, the relationship between the language of psychoanalytic theory and the practical use of the analytical method, and so on. But in the field of consciousness of psychoanalysts, terminological nuances associated with the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious are extremely rare. With the ambiguity of its use, which, among other things, is reflected in the discrepancies between the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
Freud himself was aware of all the ambiguity that arises in the process of in-depth consideration of the unconscious from the point of view of identifying its functional characteristics in various mental systems - be it the system of the preconscious or the repressed unconscious. Moreover, he believed that a certain ambiguity arises even when considering consciousness and the unconscious, since ultimately the differences between them are a matter of perception, which must be answered affirmatively or negatively. It is no coincidence that Freud emphasized that when using the terms “conscious” and “unconscious” it is difficult, almost impossible, to avoid the ambiguity that occurs.
Aware of this situation, Freud, as a researcher seeking to identify the truth and prevent possible misunderstandings, nevertheless tried to eliminate the ambiguity associated with the ambiguous use of the term “unconscious”. To this end, he proposed using a letter designation to describe various mental systems, processes or states. Thus, the system of consciousness was abbreviated by him as Bw (Bewusst), the system of the preconscious - as Vbw (Vorbewusst), the system of the unconscious - as Ubw (Unbewusst). With a lowercase letter, respectively, such designations as bw – conscious, vbw – preconscious and ubw – unconscious were introduced, which meant mainly the repressed, dynamically understood unconscious.
The lettering of various systems and processes went some way to eliminating misunderstandings that arose when using the corresponding terms. However, in the process of further research and therapeutic activity, it became clear that the distinction previously made by Freud between the preconscious and the repressed unconscious turned out to be theoretically insufficient and practically unsatisfactory. Therefore, the topical and dynamic understanding of the human psyche was supplemented by its structural understanding. This took place in the work “Ego and It” (1923), where Freud examined the structure of the psyche through the prism of the relationships between It (unconscious), I (consciousness) and Super-ego (parental authority, ideal, conscience).
Nevertheless, a new look at the relationship between conscious and unconscious processes not only did not eliminate the ambiguity in the interpretation of the unconscious, but even more complicated the understanding of the unconscious mentality as such. As a matter of fact, the work “I and It” was aimed at eliminating those simplifications in understanding the relationships between consciousness and the unconscious that became obvious as the theory and practice of psychoanalysis developed. However, delving into the jungle of the unconscious clearly demonstrated the trivial truth reflected in the common saying: “The further into the forest, the more firewood.”
It would seem that the psychoanalytic structural theory should have removed those ambiguities in the understanding of the unconscious that arose during the topical and dynamic consideration of unconscious processes. Indeed, thanks to this theory, the unconscious was studied not only from the inside, from the depths of the unconscious psyche, where unconscious processes were correlated with the forces of the It or with everything base and animal that is contained in human nature. It was also studied from the side of the Super-Ego, which personifies the norms, regulations and demands made on a person as he becomes familiar with culture. However, as a result of a structural cross-section of the study of the human psyche, the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious not only did not lose its duality, but, on the contrary, became polysemantic.
The last circumstance is associated with Freud's recognition that there is something unconscious in the Self itself, which exists along with other types of unconscious processes. This unconscious manifests itself similarly to the repressed, and special work is also required to become aware of it. This is precisely where one of the difficulties arises, when intrapersonal conflicts come down to a clash between consciousness and the unconscious. In this case, the emphasis is on the repressed unconscious, but it does not take into account that neurosis can be caused by internal problems in the Self itself, part of which is also unconscious.
We are talking about Freud's introduction of a change in the previous understanding of intrapersonal conflicts. At first, a distinction was made between consciousness and the unconscious. The descriptive approach to the human psyche assumed just such a division of it. Then, when revealing the dynamics of mental processes, consciousness, preconscious and repressed unconscious were distinguished. Finally, the structural approach to the human psyche made a significant addition to its understanding when the unconscious was discovered in the ego itself, which did not coincide with the repressed unconscious. Freud called him "third" unconscious, which in the structural model was designated by the term “Super-ego”.
Freud's recognition of the “third” unconscious made it possible to explore in a different way than before the complex interactions between conscious and unconscious processes occurring in the depths of the human psyche. It contributed to a better understanding of the nature of intrapersonal conflicts and the causes of neuroses. At the same time, the identification of the “third” unconscious has strengthened the general understanding of the unconscious psyche, which has become not just ambiguous, but truly polysemantic. Freud understood this. It is no coincidence that, speaking about the introduction of the “third” unconscious, he wrote about the polysemy of the concept of the unconscious, which has to be recognized in psychoanalysis.
If soon the concept of the unconscious turned out to be ambiguous, then maybe it would be worth giving it up? And then we should agree with those psychologists and philosophers who believed that researchers have no right to talk about the unconscious at all, since it is indefinite? However, taking into account the ambiguity of this concept, Freud nevertheless not only did not abandon the unconscious psyche as such, but, on the contrary, insisted on the need for its careful and comprehensive study. Moreover, he warned against on this basis not having a disdainful attitude either to the very concept of the unconscious, or to the psychoanalytic idea of the effectiveness of the unconscious psyche.
Thus, when considering and assessing Freud’s psychoanalytic teaching on the unconscious mental, it is necessary to take into account the subtleties that relate to Freud’s distinction between certain types of the unconscious. Without distinguishing between the psychoanalytic understanding of the preconscious, the repressed and the “third” unconscious, it is easy to fall into simplified generalizations about the nature of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.
It is generally accepted, for example, that Freud absolutized the antagonistic nature of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. And this is partly true, if we keep in mind the relationship between the repressed unconscious and consciousness. But the relationship between the preconscious and consciousness was not antagonistic for Freud. He did not draw a sharp line between them either in a topical examination of the human psyche or in a structural-functional analysis of it.
Another thing is that Freud extended the primacy of the unconscious over consciousness in the genetic section (consciousness is a product of a higher organization of the psyche) to the functional relationships between them. If we take into account his thesis that a significant part of the Self is no less unconscious than something located on the other side of consciousness, then the proportionality of both from the point of view of classical psychoanalysis becomes clear. In any case, to understand this proportionality, psychoanalysis used an image that left no doubt on this score. The human psyche has been compared to an iceberg, one third of which (consciousness) is above water, and two thirds (unconscious) is hidden under water.
Turning to the consideration of the unconscious mental, Freud sought to understand the mechanism of the transition of mental acts from the sphere of the unconscious to the system of consciousness. This had a direct bearing on both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In terms of research, it was necessary to understand how and in what way awareness of the unconscious is possible. Clinically, it was important to develop technical means to help patients gain knowledge of their unconscious drives and desires in order to further free them from the symptoms of mental illness. In both cases, some difficulties arose that required clarification.
Sayings
Z. Freud: “Even a part of the Self (God alone knows how important the part is) can be unconscious, and without any doubt it is. And this unconscious in the ego is not latent in the sense of preconscious, otherwise it could not be made active without awareness, and awareness itself would not present so many difficulties. When we are thus faced with the need to recognize a third, not repressed, then we have to admit that the property of unconsciousness loses its meaning for us. It becomes an ambiguous quality that does not allow the broad and indisputable conclusions for which we would like to use it.”
S. Freud: “The distinction between conscious and unconscious is, in the end, a matter of perception, to which one can answer “yes” or “no.”
S. Freud: “In the end, the property of unconsciousness or consciousness is the only ray of light in the darkness of depth psychology.”
Cognition of the unconscious
Freud argued that, like the physical, the mental does not really have to be exactly as it appears to us. Reality is one thing, and the idea of it is another. The perception of mental reality by consciousness is one thing, and unconscious mental processes, which are the object of consciousness, are another thing. Therefore, the psychoanalyst is faced with a difficult question: how is knowledge of the unconscious psyche possible if, in essence, it is as unknown to man as the reality of the external world?
Freud was aware that uncovering the contents of the unconscious was a difficult task. However, he believed that, as in the case of knowledge of material reality, when comprehending mental reality it is necessary to make adjustments to its external perception. Kant also said that perception is not identical to what is perceived, and on the basis of this he distinguished between a thing “in itself” and “for itself”. Freud did not seek to comprehend the essence of such subtleties. But he believed that adjustments to internal perception were feasible and, in principle, possible, since, as he believed, understanding an internal object to some extent is even easier than knowing an external object.
Of course, one can disagree with some of Freud’s statements, especially since, as real practice shows, knowledge of a person’s inner world turns out to be more difficult than knowledge of the material reality surrounding him. It is no coincidence that in the 20th century, thanks to scientific and technical knowledge, it was possible to find the key to discovering many secrets of the surrounding world, which cannot be said about comprehending the secrets of the human soul. However, Freud’s optimistic attitude towards the possibilities of knowing the unconscious mind was explained by the fact that psychoanalytic ideas about the repressed unconscious included a very specific, although perhaps at first glance strange, attitude. Based on it, processes can take place in the human psyche that are, in essence, known to him, although he seems to know nothing about them.
Those who denied the unconscious often raised quite reasonable questions. How can we talk about something of which we are not aware? How can one even judge the unconscious if it is not the subject of consciousness? How possible is it in principle to know what is beyond consciousness? These questions demanded an answer, and many thinkers puzzled over their solution to no avail. The difficulties associated with the very approach to solving these issues gave rise to a mentality according to which the reasonable way out of the situation was to refuse to recognize the unconscious as such.
Freud was not happy with this situation. Having recognized the unconscious psychic status of reality, he could not ignore all these questions, which in one way or another boiled down to considering how and in what way one can cognize what escapes a person’s consciousness. And he began to comprehend the question of knowledge of the unconscious from elementary things, from general discussions about knowledge as such.
Like his predecessors, Freud argued that all human knowledge is somehow connected with consciousness. Strictly speaking, knowledge always acts as consciousness. In turn, this means that the unconscious can be known only by becoming conscious. But traditional psychology of consciousness either ignored the unconscious, or, at best, accepted it as something so demonic that it was subject to condemnation rather than knowledge. Unlike the psychology of consciousness, psychoanalysis not only appeals to the unconscious psyche, but also strives to make it an object of knowledge.
Before Freud, for whom the unconscious psyche became an important object of cognition, the question inevitably arose: how is it possible to transform the unconscious into consciousness if it itself is not consciousness, and what does it mean to make something conscious? It can be assumed that unconscious processes occurring in the depths of the human psyche themselves reach the surface of consciousness or, conversely, consciousness in some elusive way breaks through to them. But such an assumption does not contribute to answering the question posed, since both possibilities do not reflect the real state of affairs. After all, only preconscious processes can reach consciousness, and even then a person needs to make considerable efforts to ensure that this happens. The road to consciousness is closed to the repressed unconscious. Consciousness also cannot master the repressed unconscious, since it does not know what, why and where it is repressed. It seems like a dead end.
To get out of the impasse, Freud tried to find some other possibility of transferring internal processes into a sphere where there was scope for their awareness. This opportunity presented itself to him in connection with the solution found, similar to the one that Hegel had once spoken about. A German philosopher once expressed a witty idea, according to which the answers to unanswered questions lie in the fact that the questions themselves must be posed differently. Without referring to Hegel, Freud did just that. He reformulated the question of how something becomes conscious. It makes more sense for him to ask how something can become preconscious.
Freud correlated the preconscious with the verbal expression of unconscious ideas. Therefore, the answer to the reformulated question did not cause any difficulties. It sounded like this, according to which something becomes preconscious through connection with corresponding verbal representations. Now it was only necessary to answer the question of how the repressed can become preconscious. But here direct analytical work came to the fore, with the help of which the necessary conditions were created for the emergence of mediating links facilitating the transition from the repressed unconscious to the preconscious.
In general, Freud tried in his own way to answer the tricky question about the possibilities of awareness of the unconscious. For him, conscious, preconscious and unconscious representations were not “records” of the same content in different mental systems. The first included subject representations, formalized in an appropriate verbal manner. The second is the possibility of entering into a connection between objective ideas and verbal ones. Still others are material that remains unknown, that is, unknowable, and consists of only objective ideas. Based on this, the process of cognition of the unconscious in psychoanalysis is transferred from the sphere of consciousness to the region of the preconscious.
In fact, we are talking about the translation of the repressed unconscious not into consciousness, but into the preconscious. This translation is carried out using specially developed psychoanalytic techniques, when a person’s consciousness seems to remain in its place, the unconscious does not rise directly to the level of the conscious, and the system of the preconscious becomes the most active, within the framework of which there is a real possibility of transforming the repressed unconscious into the preconscious.
Thus, in Freud's classical psychoanalysis, knowledge of the unconscious is correlated with the possibilities of meeting objective ideas with linguistic constructions expressed in verbal form. Hence the importance in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis that is attached to the role of language and linguistic constructs in revealing the meaningful characteristics of the unconscious. During a psychoanalytic session, a dialogue takes place between the analyst and the patient, where linguistic turns and speech structures serve as the basis for penetrating into the depths of the unconscious.
However, specific difficulties arise here due to the fact that the unconscious has not only a different logic, different from consciousness, but also its own language. The unconscious speaks in a language that is incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Without knowledge of this “foreign” language of the unconscious, one cannot count on knowledge of the unconscious psyche. The specific language of the unconscious is especially clearly manifested in human dreams, where various images and plots are imbued with symbolism. This symbolic language of the unconscious requires its decoding, which is not such a simple task, the implementation of which requires a person’s acquaintance with an ancient culture, where the language of symbols was an important part of people’s lives.
Realizing the difficulties in understanding the unconscious, Freud paid considerable attention to both revealing the symbolic language of the unconscious and understanding the possibilities of transferring the repressed unconscious into the sphere of the preconscious. He proposed such a specific interpretation of the nature of verbal representations, thanks to which they allowed the logical possibility of awareness of the unconscious through preconscious mediating links.
The founder of psychoanalysis put forward a postulate about verbal representations as certain traces of memories. In his understanding, any word is ultimately nothing more than a remnant of the memory of a previously heard word. In accordance with this, classical psychoanalysis was based on the recognition of the presence in a person of such knowledge, which in general he has, but about which he himself knows nothing. Possessing certain knowledge, the individual nevertheless does not realize it until the chain of memories about real events and experiences of the past that once happened in the life of an individual or in the history of the development of the human race is restored.
From Freud's point of view, only that which was once already consciously perceived can become conscious. It is obvious that with this understanding, knowledge of the unconscious becomes, in essence, recollection, the restoration in a person’s memory of previously existing knowledge. The process of cognition of the unconscious turns out to be a kind of resurrection of knowledge-memory, fragmentary components of which are located in the preconscious. However, the deep content of this is repressed due to a person’s reluctance or inability to recognize behind the symbolic language of his unconscious aspirations and desires, which are often associated with some hidden demonic forces that are alien to the individual as a social, cultural and moral being.
In his reflections on the need to restore previous memories in a person’s memory, Freud comes close to reproducing Plato’s concept of “anamnesis”. And this is indeed so, since in the interpretation of this issue there are striking similarities between the psychoanalytic hypotheses of Freud and the philosophical ideas of Plato.
As you know, the ancient Greek thinker believed that a vague knowledge is embedded in the human soul, which only needs to be remembered, making it an object of consciousness. This was the basis of his concept of human knowledge of the world around him. For Plato, to know something first of all meant to remember, to restore the knowledge that belongs to a person. Freud also held similar views, believing that knowledge is possible thanks to traces of memories. Plato assumed that a person who does not know something has a correct opinion about what he does not know. Freud reproduced the same idea almost verbatim. In any case, he emphasized that although a person does not always know about the phenomena contained in the depths of his psyche, nevertheless, they are, in essence, known to him.
Plato's concept of knowledge was based on the recollection of knowledge that existed in the form of a priori given ideas. In Freud's classical psychoanalysis, knowledge of the unconscious was correlated with the phylogenetic heritage of humanity, with phylogenetically inherited patterns, under the influence of which life phenomena were built into a certain order. In both cases, we were talking about very similar, if not more similar, positions. Another thing is that these positions were not identical to each other. There were also some differences between them. Thus, Plato proceeded from the premise of the existence of an objective world soul, the material world of which is reflected in the human soul in ideal images. Freud, on the other hand, focused on objective ideas expressed in the symbolic language of the unconscious, behind which were hidden phylogenetic structural formations that arose in the process of evolutionary development of the human race.
A topical, dynamic and structural consideration of the unconscious mind has led, on the one hand, to an in-depth understanding of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, and on the other hand, to the ambiguity of the term “unconscious” used in psychoanalysis. Freud's reflections on the possibility of knowing the unconscious partly clarified the question of how, in principle, the transition from the repressed unconscious through the pre-conscious into the sphere of consciousness is carried out, and at the same time contributed to the ambiguity of interpretation of the unconscious mental. And this is exactly so, since the unconscious itself began to correlate not only with ontogenesis (human development), but also with phylogeny (development of the human race). This understanding of the unconscious was reflected in Freud’s work “Totem and Taboo” (1913), which showed similarities between the psychology of primitive man, subject to herd instincts, and the psychology of a neurotic, at the mercy of his own drives and desires.
It should also be noted that the polysemy of the concept of “unconscious” in psychoanalysis has caused certain difficulties associated with the final results of knowledge of the unconscious mental. We are talking not so much about the translation of the unconscious into consciousness, but about the limits of psychoanalysis in identifying the essence of unconsciousness as such. Indeed, as a result, Freud’s research and therapeutic activities were aimed at revealing the initial components of the unconscious, namely those deep-seated drives, the impossibility of realizing and satisfying which led, as a rule, to the emergence of neuroses.
Sayings
S. Freud: “Only that which was once already conscious perception and which, in addition to feelings from within, wants to become conscious, can become conscious; it must make an attempt to transform itself into external perceptions. This is made possible by memory traces.”
Z. Freud: “The question - how to make something repressed (pre) conscious - should be answered as follows: such preconscious middle links need to be restored by analytical work.”
Z. Freud: “The psychoanalyst strives to bring the material repressed from consciousness into consciousness.”
Metapsychology of drives
Discovering a person's unconscious drives was one of the main tasks of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. If the practice of psychoanalysis was focused on a person’s awareness of his unconscious drives, then the theory of psychoanalysis demonstrated the possibilities of detecting these drives and ways of realizing them. As a matter of fact, this was where Freud’s research activities stopped, since in theoretical terms the possibilities of psychoanalysis were exhausted.
The only thing that psychoanalysis can still claim is, perhaps, an understanding of how legitimate it is to talk about unconscious drives in general. In fact, Freud's merit consisted in isolating and exploring the unconscious psyche. The analysis of this unconscious inevitably led to the identification of the most significant unconscious drives for human development and life. Initially (before 1915), Freud believed that these were sexual drives (libidinal) and ego drives (drives for self-preservation). Then, while studying narcissism, he saw that sexual desires can be directed not only to an external object, but also to one’s own self. Sexual energy (libido) can be directed not only outward, but also inward. Based on this, Freud introduced the concepts of object and narcissistic libido. The sexual drives he had previously put forward began to be viewed by him as object libido, and the drives for self-preservation as I-libido, or self-love. And finally, in the 20s (the work “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”), Freud correlated sexual drives with the drive to life, and the drives of the ego with the drive to death. Thus, he formulated and put forward the concept according to which a person has two main drives - the drive to life (Eros) and the drive to death (Thanatos).
In general, we can say that attraction is a person’s unconscious desire to satisfy his needs. Freud, who first used this concept in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), distinguished between instinct (Instinkt) and drive (Trieb). By instinct he understood biologically inherited animal behavior, by drive - the mental representation of a somatic source of irritation.
Paying special attention to the sexual desire, Freud identified sexual object, that is, the person towards whom this attraction is directed, and sexual purpose, that is, an action that the drive pushes to perform. He supplemented the psychoanalytic understanding of the object, purpose and source of attraction with corresponding ideas about the strength of attraction. To quantify sexual desire, Freud used the concept of “libido” - as a kind of force or energy that measures sexual arousal. Libido directs a person’s sexual activity and makes it possible to describe in economic terms the processes occurring in the human psyche, including those associated with neurotic diseases.
In his work “The Drives and Their Fates” (1915), Freud deepened his ideas about drives. He emphasized that the goal of the drive is to achieve satisfaction, and its object is the one through which the drive can achieve its goal. According to his views, attraction is influenced by three polarities: biological polarity, which includes an active and passive attitude towards the world; real - implying division into subject and object, Self and external world; economic – based on the polarity of pleasure (pleasure) and displeasure.
As for the fate of drives, in his opinion, there are several possible ways of their development. Attraction can turn into its opposite (the transformation of love into hatred and vice versa). It can turn on the personality itself, when the focus on an object is replaced by a person’s focus on himself. The drive may be inhibited, that is, ready to retreat from the object and goal. And finally, drive is capable of sublimation, that is, of modifying the goal and changing the object, which takes into account social evaluation.
In his Introduction to Psychoanalysis lectures, written in 1933, Freud summarized his views on instinctual life. In the light of these generalizations, the psychoanalytic understanding of drives acquired the following form:
¦ drive is different from irritation, it comes from a source of irritation within the body and acts as a constant force;
¦ when studying attraction as a process, it is necessary to distinguish between the source, object and goal, where the source of attraction is the state of excitation in the body, and the goal is the elimination of this excitation;
¦ attraction becomes mentally effective on the way from source to goal;
¦ mentally effective attraction has a certain amount of energy (libido);
¦ on the path of attraction to a goal and an object, it is allowed to replace the latter with other goals and objects, including socially acceptable ones (sublimation);
¦ it is possible to distinguish between drives that are delayed on the way to the goal and those that are delayed on the way to satisfaction;
¦ there is a difference between drives serving the sexual function and drives for self-preservation (hunger and thirst), the former being characterized by plasticity, substitutability and detachment, while the latter are inflexible and urgent.
In sadism and masochism there is a fusion of two types of drives. Sadism is an attraction directed outward, towards external destruction. Masochism, if we ignore the erotic component, is an attraction to self-destruction. The latter (the drive to self-destruction) can be considered an expression of the death drive, which leads the living to an inorganic state.
The theory of drives put forward by Freud caused mixed reactions from psychologists, philosophers, doctors, and psychoanalysts. Many of them criticized metapsychological (based on the general theory of the human psyche) ideas about human drives. Freud himself repeatedly emphasized that drives constitute a field of study in which it is difficult to navigate and difficult to achieve a clear understanding. Thus, he initially introduced the concept of “attraction” to distinguish between the mental and the physical. However, later he had to talk about the fact that drives govern not only mental, but also vegetative life. Ultimately, Freud recognized that drive is a rather obscure but indispensable concept in psychology, that drives and their transformations are the final point accessible to psychoanalytic knowledge.
Among psychologists, philosophers and physiologists of the second half of the 19th century, there were discussions about whether unconscious ideas, inferences, drives, and actions exist. Some of them believed that we can only talk about unconscious ideas, but there is no need to introduce the concept of “unconscious conclusions.” Others recognized the validity of both. Still others, on the contrary, generally denied the existence of any forms of the unconscious.
Like some researchers, Freud also raised the question of whether there are unconscious feelings, sensations, and drives. It would seem that, given the fact that in psychoanalysis the unconscious mind was considered as an important and necessary hypothesis, such a formulation of the question looked more than strange. After all, the initial theoretical postulates and the final results of Freud's research and therapeutic work coincided in one thing - in the recognition of unconscious drives as the main determinants of human activity. And yet, he asked himself the question: how legitimate is it to talk about unconscious drives? Moreover, as paradoxical as it may be at first glance, Freud's answer to this question was completely unexpected. Be that as it may, he emphasized that there are no unconscious affects and in relation to drives it is hardly possible to talk about any opposition between the conscious and the unconscious.
Why did Freud come to this conclusion? How can all this be correlated with his recognition of the unconscious psyche? What role did his reflections on the limits of psychoanalysis in understanding the unconscious play in his views on human drives? And finally, why did he question the existence of unconscious drives, which seemed to negate his doctrine of the unconscious?
In fact, Freud did not think of renouncing his psychoanalytic doctrine of the unconscious psyche. On the contrary, all his research and therapeutic efforts were concentrated on identifying the unconscious and the possibilities of bringing it into consciousness. However, consideration of the unconscious psyche in a cognitive sense forced Freud not only to recognize the limitations of psychoanalysis in the knowledge of the unconscious, but also to turn to clarifying the meaning that is usually attached to the concept of “unconscious drive.”
The specificity of the issues discussed by Freud was that, in his deep conviction, a researcher can deal not so much with a person’s drives themselves, but with certain ideas about them. According to this understanding, all discussions about drives from the point of view of their consciousness and unconsciousness are nothing more than conditional. On this occasion, the founder of psychoanalysis noted that his use of the concept of “unconscious attraction” is a kind of “harmless carelessness of expression.”
Thus, although Freud constantly appealed to the concept of “unconscious drive,” he was essentially talking about an unconscious idea. This kind of ambiguity is very characteristic of classical psychoanalysis. And it is no coincidence that Freud’s teaching about the unconscious psyche and the basic drives of man met with such discrepancies on the part of his followers, not to mention his critically minded opponents. This led to the emergence of multidirectional trends within the psychoanalytic movement.
The “harmless carelessness of expression” that Freud spoke of turned out to be not so harmless in reality. It had far-reaching consequences. And the point is not only that the ambiguity of the concept of “unconscious” and the ambiguity in the interpretation of human drives often affected the interpretation of psychoanalysis as such. More importantly, behind all the ambiguities and omissions that concerned the conceptual apparatus of psychoanalysis, there was hidden a heuristic and substantive limitation, which ultimately complicates the knowledge and understanding of the unconscious. Another thing is that this was indeed an unusually difficult area of research and practical use of knowledge in clinical practice, which did honor to any scientist and analyst if he had at least to some extent advanced in the direction of studying the unconscious psyche. Freud was no exception. On the contrary, he was one of those who not only raised fundamental questions regarding the nature and possibility of knowledge of the unconscious, but also outlined certain paths, following which allowed both himself and other psychoanalysts to make a feasible contribution to the study of the unconscious.
Sayings
Z. Freud: “Attractions and their transformations are the lowest that psychoanalysis is able to understand. Then it gives way to biological research.”
Z. Freud: “I really think that the opposition between the conscious and the unconscious has no application in relation to the drive. An attraction can never be an object of consciousness; it can only be a representation that reflects this attraction in consciousness. But even in the unconscious, attraction can only be reflected through representation.”
Z. Freud: “And if we still talk about an unconscious drive, or a repressed drive, then this is only a harmless carelessness of expression. By this we can only understand an attraction that is reflected in the psyche by an unconscious idea, and nothing else is meant by this.”
Specificity of unconscious processes
When understanding the problem of the unconscious mind, Freud put forward several ideas that turned out to be important for the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In addition to the distinctions he made between the conscious, the preconscious and the repressed unconscious, as well as the recognition of the “third” non-repressed unconscious (Super-I), he examined the properties and qualities of unconscious processes. First of all, Freud emphasized that, along with the primary nature of unconscious processes, they are dynamically active and mobile. A person’s desires and drives, repressed into the unconscious, do not lose their effectiveness, do not become passive, and do not remain at rest. On the contrary, being in the depths of the human psyche, they accumulate their strength and are ready to break free at any opportune moment. As a result, a person sometimes has no choice but to flee into illness. The human psyche contains, using Freud’s expression, always active, immortal desires of our unconscious sphere. They resemble the mythical titans on which, since time immemorial, heavy mountain ranges have been built, once piled up by the gods and still shaken by the movements of their muscles.
In the theory of psychoanalysis, recognition of the active nature of unconscious processes meant a focus on studying the dynamics of their transition from one system to another. In the practice of psychoanalysis, this involved considering the causes of neuroses from the point of view of the repressed unconscious, which was dormant for the time being in the depths of the psyche. Activation of the latter inevitably leads to the formation of various symptoms indicating mental illness.
In addition, Freud believed that, unlike consciousness, the unconscious is characterized by the absence of any contradictions. The logic of consciousness is such that it does not tolerate contradictions. If they are found in a person's thoughts or actions, then at best it can be regarded as a misunderstanding, and at worst as a disease. The logic of the unconscious is distinguished by such dissent, in which the inconsistency of the course of unconscious processes is not a deviation from a certain norm. Contradictions exist only in consciousness and for consciousness. For the unconscious there are no contradictions.
Any absurdity recorded by consciousness is not such for the unconscious. On the contrary, it is no less significant in meaning for the unconscious than any logically harmonious and consistent construction for consciousness. From the point of view of the theory of psychoanalysis, behind the inconsistency and absurdity of the unconscious there is a hidden, secret meaning, the identification of which is very important for research work. In clinical terms, the patient’s thinking and behavior, which is illogical from the standpoint of consciousness, is perceived by the analyst as important empirical material, indicating the activation of unconscious processes that need to reveal their origins and specific content. The goal is to identify their true meaning and bring to consciousness everything that seems absurd and contradictory at first glance.
No less significant is the fact that when revealing the specifics of the unconscious psyche, Freud revised the usual ideas about time. In his understanding, time as such has significance only for consciousness. There is no sense of time in the unconscious. The unconscious itself appears to be outside of time. Thus, in a dream or in a neurotic state, the past and present do not necessarily follow each other in the chronological sequence in which real or imaginary events occurred. In the unconscious, the past and present, as well as the future, can shift in any direction, ahead of or replacing each other.
For Freud, timelessness is one of the most characteristic features unconscious. He even believed that the psychoanalytic idea of the timelessness of the unconscious could lead to a revision of the ideas of the German philosopher Kant about a priori, that is, existing independently of human experience and the forms of space and time that precede it. It is important to keep in mind that viewing the unconscious through the prism of its timelessness led to the recognition of specific differences between conscious and unconscious processes. As Freud believed, unlike conscious processes, unconscious processes are not distributed in a temporal sequence, do not change over time, and have nothing to do with time at all.
Freud's ideas about time were directly related to both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In theory, he used the concept of time to characterize various mental processes. In clinical practice - to establish the frequency of psychoanalytic sessions and the duration of treatment.
In addition to recognizing the unconscious as timeless, Freud believed that there is an interval between the occurrence of illness in the present and its deep sources, rooted in the past. The causes of neurotic diseases should be sought in the period of time when the most powerful childhood experiences arose, caused by various kinds of real events or fantasies.
The problem of time is also important for the practice of psychoanalysis. It includes three aspects: the exact time of the patient’s arrival to the analyst, the frequency and duration of the psychoanalytic session, and the duration of the patient’s treatment. Freud believed that, despite the timelessness of the unconscious, or rather precisely because of it, the observance of certain conditions regarding time is essential for all three aspects.
Setting an exact time to visit a psychoanalyst is of fundamental importance. The patient is responsible for the time allocated to him, even if he does not use it. He is responsible for him in that, in principle, he is obliged to pay for the time assigned to him, but not used, as sometimes happens when the patient begins to resort to various kinds of tricks in order to miss the next session. The patient’s desire to reschedule the next session of psychoanalytic treatment to another time, being late or forgetting the time of the visit to the analyst are most often the tricks of patients trying to slow down the process of revealing the secrets of their life or to preserve their illness in order to obtain some benefit from it.
The duration of a psychoanalytic session is usually limited to one academic hour, which is 45–50 minutes, and their frequency depends on the patient’s condition. Freud argued that psychoanalytic sessions should be conducted daily, with the exception of weekends and holidays, and in mild cases or long-term, well-established treatment - three times a week. Missed sessions and breaks in treatment complicate psychoanalytic work and do not contribute to the treatment of the patient.
The duration of treatment with psychoanalytic methods is always long - from six months to several years. One can understand patients who want to free themselves from a neurotic disorder in two or three sessions. One can also understand those who view long-term psychoanalytic treatment as a way of “extorting” money from patients. However, as Freud emphasized, the desired reduction in psychoanalytic treatment is hampered by the timelessness of unconscious processes and the slow implementation of mental changes. Time limits do not benefit either the doctor or the patient.
Finally, along with reflections on the timelessness of unconscious processes, Freud carefully considered the relationship between physical and mental reality to identify the specific characteristics of the unconscious. He began by rethinking the theory of seduction that he had previously put forward, according to which the cause of neuroses was real traumatic childhood events associated with the attacks of adults, most often parents or close relatives, on children. As a result, the understanding of psychic reality as an important component of human life came to the fore. In psychoanalysis, it is psychic reality that has become an important and integral part of research and therapeutic activities. In fact, during the psychoanalytic “dissection” of the unconscious, any boundaries between fiction and reality, fantasy and reality were erased.
This did not mean at all that such boundaries did not exist at all or that they could not be drawn in principle. The point is not this at all, but the fact that for the unconscious, internal reality is no less important than the external world. Rather, on the contrary, most often it is the psychic reality that becomes more significant for a person than his external environment. This reality is especially important when neuroses arise. In any case, by focusing on the unconscious mental, Freud proved that for neurosis, mental reality means more than material reality.
For the founder of psychoanalysis, mental reality was the sphere in which the most significant and significant processes and changes for human life occur, affecting his thinking and behavior. From his point of view, the unconscious mental is the object of study that allows us to better understand both the specifics of the course of certain processes in the human psyche and the causes of neurotic diseases. Thus, escape into illness is a person’s departure from the reality around him into the world of fantasy. In his fantasies, the neurotic deals not with material reality, but with fictitious reality; nevertheless, it turns out to be really significant for him. In the world of neuroses, it is the psychic reality that is decisive.
In psychoanalysis, considerable attention is paid to considering the role of mental reality in human life. Hence the special interest in fantasies and dreams, which provide an opportunity to look into the depths of the human psyche and reveal his unconscious desires and drives. The psychoanalyst does not attach fundamental importance to whether a person’s experiences are connected with actual events that once took place or whether they correlate with plots reflected in fantasies, dreams, daydreams, and illusions. To understand the intrapsychic conflicts playing out in a person’s soul, it is important to identify those elements of mental reality that caused these conflicts to arise. For successful treatment of nervous diseases, it is necessary to bring to the patient’s consciousness the importance of unconscious processes and forces that make up the content of mental reality and play a certain role in human life.
All this was taken into account by Freud when considering the unconscious psyche. He took all this into account when identifying the specific characteristics of the unconscious as such.
In order to present Freud's views on the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious in a more visual form, it makes sense to record the most important theoretical positions he put forward. These provisions boil down to the following:
¦ identifying the psyche with consciousness is inappropriate, because it violates mental continuity and plunges into insoluble difficulties of psychophysical parallelism;
¦ the assumption of the unconscious psyche is necessary because the data of consciousness have many gaps, the explanation of which is impossible without the recognition of mental processes different from conscious ones;
¦ the unconscious is a natural and inevitable phase of the processes that underlie human mental activity;
¦ the core of the unconscious consists of inherited mental formations;
¦ each mental act begins as unconscious, it can remain so or, developing further, penetrate into consciousness, depending on whether it encounters resistance or not;
¦ the unconscious is a special mental system with its own way of expression and its own mechanisms of functioning;
¦ unconscious processes are not identical to conscious ones, they enjoy a certain freedom, which the latter are deprived of;
¦ the laws of unconscious mental activity differ in many respects from the laws to which the activity of consciousness is subject;
¦ one should not identify the perception of consciousness with the unconscious mental process that is the object of this consciousness;
¦ the value of the unconscious as an indicator of a special mental system is greater than its value as a qualitative category;
¦ the unconscious is cognized only as conscious after its transformation or translation into a form accessible to consciousness, since, being not an essence, but a quality of the psyche, consciousness remains the only source illuminating the depths of the human psyche;
¦ some of the unconscious states differ from conscious ones only in the absence of consciousness;
¦ the opposition between the conscious and unconscious does not extend to drive, since the object of consciousness may not be drive, but only an idea that reflects this drive in consciousness;
¦ special properties of the unconscious:
– primary process;
– activity;
– absence of contradictions;
– flow outside of time;
- replacement of external, physical reality with internal, mental reality.
It is obvious that the theoretical positions about the unconscious formulated by Freud can be perceived differently by those who today are trying to understand the meaning, significance and role of unconscious processes in human life. Some of these provisions can be perceived as starting points, initial ones, contributing to the identification and understanding of the unconscious activities of people. Others will probably cause objections and even protest from those who are disgusted by the idea of recognizing the unconscious as a fundamental principle that predetermines the thinking and behavior of an individual. Still others will disappoint specialists in the field of human studies with their triviality. The fourth ones will seem too abstruse, philosophically colored and not related to therapeutic activity.
However, no matter how this may be perceived by contemporaries who are condescending towards classical psychoanalysis, it is hardly worth discounting the fact that it was Freud who made a serious attempt to thoroughly consider the characteristic features and essence of the unconscious, as well as the possibilities and ways of knowing it.
Sayings
Z. Freud: “The unconscious seemed to us at first only a mysterious feature of a certain mental process; now it means more to us, it serves as an indication that this process is part of the essence of a certain mental category, which is known to us by other important characteristic features, and that it belongs to a system of mental activity that deserves our full attention.
Z. Freud: “The mental life of hysterical patients is full of active, but unconscious ideas; from them all symptoms arise. This is truly a characteristic feature of hysterical thinking - it is dominated by unconscious ideas.”
S. Freud: “Reducing analytical treatment remains a completely fair desire, the fulfillment of which we achieve in various ways. Unfortunately, this is hampered by a very important point - the slowness with which deep mental changes take place, and ultimately, perhaps, the timelessness of our unconscious processes.” L. Shertok, “The unconscious is not a kingdom of blind forces, but a certain structure, the basis of which is made up of several basic drives. After this Freudian discovery, the unconscious is no longer a dark well from whose depths we can occasionally draw something interesting. It has become an object accessible to scientific knowledge.”
Difficulties and limitations on the path to awareness of the unconscious
Freud was not a man who blindly relied on his own ideas about the unconscious psyche and did not have any doubts about the possibilities of knowing the unconscious. On the contrary, having put forward his ideas about the unconscious psyche, he constantly made adjustments to his understanding of the dynamics of unconscious processes and sometimes expressed considerations according to which psychoanalysis did not always lead to theoretically indisputable evidence and practically effective results.
Thus, striving to identify and reveal the meaning of a person’s unconscious drives and desires, Freud believed that the study of dreams is the most fruitful and promising approach to understanding the nature, content and mechanisms of functioning of the unconscious. The work “Interpretation of Dreams” was devoted precisely to this task - the study of the unconscious through the interpretation of various dreams. For Freud, dreams acted as the “royal road” to knowledge of the unconscious. However, this did not prevent him from being critical of the limits of psychoanalytic knowledge of the unconscious. It is no coincidence that at the end of his work “The Interpretation of Dreams” he noted that the unconscious is not fully revealed by dream data, as the analyst would like.
Attention has already been drawn to the fact that Freud's knowledge of the unconscious culminated, in essence, with the identification of unconscious drives. Thus, he recognized the limit beyond which the psychoanalyst cannot go further, wanting to comprehend the unconscious manifestations of a person. But doesn’t this mean that Freud actually recognized the impossibility of revealing the nature of the unconscious psyche by means of psychoanalysis?
As strange as it may seem at first glance, the founder of psychoanalysis often came to exactly this conclusion. Indeed, in many of his works he opposed abstract interpretations of the unconscious and reproached his predecessors, especially philosophers, for their failure to explain the true nature of human unconscious activity. At the same time, while carrying out its research work in understanding the unconscious psyche, he also found himself in a rather strange position when he had to talk about the limits of psychoanalytic knowledge of the unconscious. In any case, Freud was forced to admit that, like the philosopher who regarded the unconscious as a kind of fable, the analyst who recognizes the mental life of man as unconscious rather than conscious, as a result also cannot say what the unconscious is.
This situation was typical not only for the theory, but also for the practice of classical psychoanalysis. In fact, in the process of Freud's practical work, knowledge of the unconscious in order to eliminate the patient's ignorance of his mental processes as one of the causes of neurosis did not lead to automatic relief from neurotic disorder. The original position, according to which knowledge of the meaning of a symptom led to liberation from it, turned out to be problematic in its practical implementation. This attitude served as a necessary orientation in revealing the meaning of the patient’s unconscious activity, in order to reveal his hidden tendencies behind the symbolic language of the unconscious and make them an object of consciousness. But from a theoretical point of view, knowledge of the unconscious reached the point of recording unconscious desires of a sexual nature and stopped there. In the practice of psychoanalysis, it turned out that revealing the meaning of individual manifestations of a patient’s unconscious acts did not always directly free him from neurosis.
Subsequently, Freud reconsidered the possibilities, ways and means that could lead to liberation from painful symptoms. I will return to this issue when the object of consideration becomes the psychoanalytic concept of neuroses and psychoanalytic therapy in general. For now, I would like to emphasize that Freud himself had many cases of psychoanalytic treatment that were incomplete.
However, unlike some modern psychoanalysts who consider psychoanalysis as a panacea for all mental illnesses, Freud did not consider psychoanalytic treatment to be omnipotent, suitable for all occasions. On the contrary, as with knowledge of the unconscious, he saw certain limitations of psychoanalysis as a medical means of treating patients. It is no coincidence that Freud emphasized that the value of psychoanalysis should be considered not so much in terms of its effectiveness in medical practice, but in terms of understanding its significance as a conceptual means of studying the unconscious mind. He noted that if psychoanalysis were as unsuccessful in all other forms of nervous and mental illness as in the field of delusions, it would still remain fully justified as an indispensable means of scientific research.
Ultimately, both in Freud's research and therapeutic activities, deciphering traces of the unconscious and identifying the meaning of unconscious processes did not finally resolve the issue of the depth of knowledge and awareness of the unconscious psyche. After all, the interpretation of manifestations of the unconscious, reflected in a person’s speech, his dreams or symptoms of illness, can allow for variable, that is, diverse, often inconsistent interpretations of the unconscious.
On the one hand, the individual-personal speech of a person communicating with an analyst often turns out to be embellished, hiding and masking the true state of affairs. The patient is not always sincere and truthful. He wants to appear better in the eyes of the analyst than he really is. Often he not only consciously deceives the analyst, but is also unconsciously deceived about his own account. Moreover, the patient’s insincerity is clothed both in forms that the psychoanalyst, being a professional, can easily recognize, and in clothes that are not always recognizable and contribute to the exposure of the conscious or unconscious deceiver. Here, not only do difficulties of a professional nature arise, but also space opens up for misinterpretation of the unconscious, especially in the case when the analyst relies on his own infallibility.
On the other hand, understanding the linguistic material and speech flow depends on the subjective perception of the analyst who adheres to one or another ideological orientation. It’s one thing to strictly adhere to the rules and guidelines of classical psychoanalysis with all the ensuing consequences. Another is to follow other psychoanalytic theories that reject Freud’s ideas about the sexual nature of the Oedipus complex, the unconscious attraction to death, and the destructive, destructive instinct inherent in humans. It is no coincidence that psychoanalysts, who hold different views on the basic assumptions about unconscious drives, also perceive differently the “historical truth” hidden behind the speech of patients, their dreams or symptoms of diseases. For example, when analyzing dreams, various interpretations are possible, since patients often adapt the content of their dreams to the theories of the doctors treating them. Psychoanalysts often see in the dreams of their patients exactly what they absolutely want to see, in order to thereby harmonize theory and practice. In addition, the interpretation of dreams does not exclude the possibility that the psychoanalyst may overlook something significant, underestimate any image, plot, element, or take a different look at the entire dream as a whole. Therefore, deciphering traces of the unconscious and identifying semantic connections allows for a biased attitude, which manifests itself in the process of psychoanalytic knowledge of the unconscious.
There is something else to keep in mind. In arguing that psychoanalysis can be seen as an indispensable tool scientific research, Freud at the same time placed the main emphasis not so much on explanation as on the description and interpretation of the unconscious psyche. True, in his works he sometimes did not distinguish between explanation and interpretation. However, it is quite obvious that these are not the same thing. In addition, Freud viewed psychoanalysis as a natural science, from which it follows that the description and interpretation of unconscious processes should be followed by their explanation. However, his first fundamental work was called “The Interpretation of Dreams,” and not an explanation of them.
At one time, the German philosopher Dilthey tried to identify the differences between “explanatory” and “descriptive” psychology. He argued that only natural phenomena can be explained, while the mental life of a person is comprehended by internal perception and, therefore, its understanding is achieved by describing the corresponding ideas, motives of behavior, memories and fantasies of the individual. Freud did not intend to identify psychoanalysis with descriptive psychology. On the contrary, in some works he even sought to emphasize the difference between the psychoanalytic doctrine of the unconscious and this kind of psychology. He believed that after recognizing the differences between the conscious, preconscious and repressed unconscious, psychoanalysis separated from descriptive psychology.
It would seem that Freud's vision of psychoanalysis brings him closer to explanatory psychology. However, in reality, psychoanalysis did not become an explanatory scientific discipline. Despite Freud's attempts not only to describe, but also, if possible, to explain mental processes and, thus, to reveal the nature of the unconscious mind, he failed to make explanation the basic principle of psychoanalysis. It is no coincidence that in his works he often talks about description and interpretation rather than about explaining mental processes.
Considering psychoanalysis as a science, many of its representatives try to prove the scientific nature of psychoanalytic constructs. At the same time, they resort to arguments according to which psychoanalysis fits organically into the framework of scientific disciplines that deal with the explanation of certain phenomena, processes and forces contained and operating in the human psyche. Of course, there are opposing points of view, according to which psychoanalysis is not an explanatory science, but is, at best, an instrumental means for describing and interpreting the unconscious mind.
With all his desire to consider psychoanalysis as a scientific discipline that provides a scientific explanation of the unconscious, Freud was forced to admit the limitations of the psychoanalytic approach to knowledge of the unconscious precisely in terms of its explanatory functions. Thus, in one of his works, he unambiguously said that psychoanalytic research does not have access to an explanation of the unconscious psyche.
All this does not mean that psychoanalysis is futile in the study of unconscious processes or in the treatment of neuroses. This does not mean that Freud's research and therapeutic activities were useless for uncovering the unconscious mind and eliminating neurotic symptoms. His own admissions of the limitations of psychoanalysis, unable to go beyond identifying a person’s unconscious drives and becoming an all-powerful means of curing literally all mental illnesses, testified more to the honesty of the scientist and the modesty of the doctor than to the worthlessness and futility of the psychoanalytic approach to the study of man.
Some psychologists, philosophers and doctors believed, as they still do, that in principle it is impossible to know something that is not an object of consciousness and, therefore, there can be no talk of any unconsciousness. Freud not only opposed this point of view, but throughout his research and therapeutic activities demonstrated the possibility of identifying unconscious processes. If those who nevertheless recognized the unconscious allowed only abstract, abstract thoughts about unconscious processes, then, in contrast to them, the founder of psychoanalysis, using concrete, empirical material, showed how and in what way the unconscious can be identified, recorded and worked with .
Freud recognized that psychoanalysis is not omnipotent either in its research or in its therapeutic functions. He agreed that, like philosophers, the psychoanalyst cannot answer the question of what the unconscious is. But he proceeded from the fact that psychoanalysis can help in the study of the unconscious mind and use the knowledge obtained in this way for therapeutic purposes. Moreover, where and when other methods of research and therapy turn out, due to their inherent limitations, to be ineffective and ineffective in identifying a person’s unconscious desires and drives. In this regard, noteworthy is Freud's statement in Resistance to Psychoanalysis (1925), according to which the analyst can point out specific areas of human activity where the unconscious manifests itself.
One of Freud's greatest achievements was precisely that he demonstrated the possibility of studying the unconscious using concrete material. He turned to the study of those specifics that, as a rule, did not come to the attention of psychologists, philosophers and doctors interested in the laws of human thinking and behavior. His research and therapeutic interest was attracted by the “little things of life” that remain on the other side of consciousness and do not represent any significance for people who are accustomed to correlating their own lives and the lives of others with epoch-making events, grandiose achievements, and large-scale tasks.
The psychology of consciousness soared to the heights of the spiritual world of the individual. The psychology of the unconscious presupposed an appeal to the basest passions of man. The first was focused on revealing the conscious-intelligent activity of the individual. The second attempted to identify unconscious processes, forces, desires and drives that accumulate and are contained in the underworld of the human soul. Traditional psychology has been studying the patterns of a person’s inner world that contribute to the development of his vital forces. Psychoanalysis aimed at revealing its “abominations” that bring a person pain, suffering, torment and bring him to a state where he had to flee to illness.
For Freud, it was the “little things in life” that became the primary object of close attention and comprehension. For him, it was the patterns of the inner world of man that turned out to be important and essential for understanding the essence and mechanisms of the work of the unconscious. Therefore, Freud's research and therapeutic activities were aimed primarily at such areas of manifestation of the unconscious, which for the most part remained in the shadows and were not recognized as worthy objects of study. For Freud, such areas of manifestation of the unconscious were erroneous actions, dreams and neurotic symptoms. Their research marked the beginning of a concrete study of the unconscious and the establishment of psychoanalysis as an independent branch of knowledge and therapeutic treatment of mental illness.
It is quite obvious that in order to better understand the weight of Freud’s contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of man, it is necessary to follow him by turning to the “little things of life”, to those areas of manifestation of the unconscious that aroused increased interest among the founder of psychoanalysis. Thus, the object of subsequent consideration will be the erroneous actions of a person, his dreams and neurotic symptoms.
Sayings
3. Freud: “The unconscious is the truly real psychic, as unknown to us in its inner essence as the reality of the external world, and revealed by dream data to the same insignificant extent as the external world is revealed by the testimony of our senses.”
3. Freud: “The task of providing explanations facing psychoanalysis in general is narrowly limited. It is necessary to explain the conspicuous symptoms, revealing their origin; there is no need to explain the mental mechanisms and drives that one arrives at in this way; they can only be described.”
3. Freud: “The analyst also cannot say what the unconscious is, but he can point to the area of those manifestations, the observation of which led him to assume the existence of the unconscious.”
Control questions
1. Is Freud the discoverer of the unconscious?
2. How and in what way did Freud come to the idea of the unconscious mind?
3. What is the preconscious and repressed unconscious?
4. How is knowledge of the unconscious possible?
5. What did Freud mean when he spoke about unconscious drives?
6. What is the psychoanalytic understanding of human drives?
7. What are the specifics of unconscious processes?
8. Can a psychoanalyst answer the question, what is the unconscious?
9. What are the difficulties and limitations that lie on the path of awareness of the unconscious?
10. In what areas of human activity can a psychoanalyst record the real manifestation of unconscious processes?
1. Bassin F. B. The problem of the unconscious (about unconscious forms of higher nervous activity). – M., 1968.
2. The unconscious: nature, functions, research methods / Ed. A. S. Prangishvili, A. E. Sherozia, F. B. Bassina. – Tbilisi, 1978. T. 1.
3. Knapp G. The concept of the unconscious and its meaning in Freud // Encyclopedia of Depth Psychology. T. 1: Sigmund Freud. Life, work, legacy. – M., 1998.
4. Rank O., Sachs G. The unconscious and the forms of its manifestation // Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis and Russian thought. – M., 1994.
5. Freud 3. Some remarks regarding the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis // Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis and Russian thought. – M., 1994.
6. Freud 3. Resistance against psychoanalysis // Psychoanalytic studies. – Minsk, 1997.
7. Freud 3. I and It // Libido. – M., 1996.
8. Ellenberg G. F. Discovery of the unconscious: history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry / General. ed. preface V. Zelensky. – St. Petersburg, 2001. Part 1.
9. Ellenberg G. F. Discovery of the unconscious: history and evolution of dynamic psychiatry / General. ed. and preface V. Zelensky. – St. Petersburg, 2004. T. 2.
In modern literature on heuristics, the thesis about the important, indeed, dominant role of the unconscious (subconscious) in creative activity has become essentially trivial. And this is by no means a tribute to Freud’s theory of the “repressed unconscious,” but a consequence of the growing interest of researchers in serious scientific developments of the problem in the pre- and post-psychoanalytic period, which gives grounds to consider the phenomenon of the unconscious as a “source of the creative process” (V. A. Engelhardt).
Analyzing the structure of creative thinking, researchers invariably identify that stage (level)*, usually called the “passive” or “rest” period, which comes after a long (usually unsuccessful) stage of solving a problem using conventional methods of logical analysis. It is at this moment that it is believed that the activation of those forms of the psyche that cannot be attributed to the activity of consciousness in the strict sense of the word occurs.
* (There is no consensus regarding the number of these levels. A. Poincare and J. Hadamard call the number 2, G. Wallace and E. Hutchinson - 4, G. Neller - 5, etc.)
One of the founders of the theory of creativity, A. Poincaré called this “abnormal brain activity”, in which the researcher seems to split into two “I”: “I” - conscious” and “I” - unconscious” (subliminal), associated primarily with "subtle intuition". Consciousness, in his opinion, requires discipline, rigor and a clear methodology. The unconscious, on the contrary, is freed from such strict restrictions and is associated with freedom and creative search. This point of view subsequently became very widespread. The unconscious is characterized as a “hidden process, the capabilities of which significantly exceed the mechanisms of conscious intellectual activity. These hidden mechanisms, according to numerous data, are associated with creative processes, with acts of instant “insight”, “insight”, such as intuition, the phenomenon of insight, etc. " *
* (Problems of intellectual activity management. Tbilisi, 1974, p. 42.)
It is curious and at the same time significant that both of these statements, separated by a time interval of three quarters of a century and a colossal shift in the development of science, have essentially no positive, semantic distance. The fact that the concept is sustainable is quite obvious. Many specialists in the field of heuristics who recognize the reality of unconscious forms of mental reflection, regardless of their own philosophical and psychological orientation, are united by the desire to emphasize the primacy of the unconscious over consciousness in the field of creative activity. This tendency becomes the theoretical basis for constructing various structural and functional models of creative thinking and developing methods for stimulating it. One of them, the method of psychointellectual generation (PIG), proposed by scientists at the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, is based precisely on the “pumping” of information from the sphere of the unconscious to the sphere of consciousness.
The model of heuristic thinking is based on a hypothesis about the quantum-wave structure of the coherent brain, which allows, according to the authors, in a materialistic sense, to outline a philosophical solution to questions about the nature of the unconscious, the essence of intuition, etc. Consciousness and the unconscious are considered as different types brain activity, conventionally called C-thinking and Q-thinking, controlled by C-neurons and Q-neurons, respectively. The question of where new thoughts mature and what is the source of productive thinking is given a clear answer: mainly in Q-structures, in which the processing of information is of a “global-integral” nature in contrast to the “local-elementary” activity of consciousness. The unconscious processes themselves are “ordinary real physical processes associated with the interaction in 4-dimensional lattice nerve networks of many coherent wave-signals described by quantum-wave information functions. The unconsciousness of these processes is not due to the fact that they are some kind of mystical, otherworldly processes, but with the fact that in them the events of the external world are compared not with probabilities, but with amplitudes of probabilities" *.
* (Problems of intellectual activity management, p. 52.)
This is the essence of the concept and the structural-functional model of intellectual activity built on its basis, which, according to the authors, is capable of describing a system of interaction different levels mental reflection, reveal the specifics of creative thinking and give a philosophical and materialistic explanation of the nature of these phenomena.
Despite the fact that many modern researchers of problems of creativity have decisively shifted the emphasis from unconscious activity to conscious activity, the reality of unconscious components in the system of creative activity does not raise any doubts among them. Moreover, it is the unconscious (hidden) side of this process that, in their opinion, requires further in-depth research. And if the opinions of scientists differ in assessing the dominant factors of various forms of psycho-intellectual activity that implement the creative process, then the unconscious nature of intuition is considered to be one of its most characteristic features. Intuition is somehow associated with unconscious (subconscious) activity by I. V. Bychko, V. F. Gorbachevsky, V. N. Dubrovin, E. S. Zharikov, V. N. Kolbanovsky, I. K. Rodionova, A. G. Spirkin, V. P. Tugarinov, A. E. Sheroziya, V. A. Engelgardt, etc.
So, modern researchers are faced with a dilemma: either the “passivity” of consciousness at a certain stage of creative activity is just a mental illusion, or the thought process really shifts into the sphere of unconscious forms of mental reflection. If the first thesis is true, then how to explain the lack of conscious control over certain forms of creative thinking, and above all intuition? Recognizing the validity of the second thesis requires making significant adjustments to the theory of mental reflection and the theory of knowledge, since it allows for the possibility of realizing higher forms of intellectual activity at the level of the unconscious psyche. This problem has not only psychological and epistemological, but mainly methodological significance. In any case, in resolving the question of the mental mechanisms of the phenomenon of intuition, this seems quite obvious.
The problem of the unconscious is often associated primarily with the school of psychoanalysis and especially with the teachings of Z. Freud. However, long before Freud, this problem was the subject of serious attention by thinkers such as I. Kant, G. Leibniz, G. Fechner and others. Characterizing the human psyche, Fechner compared it to a giant iceberg, where consciousness is represented by its insignificant visible part; the main invisible part of the iceberg is the unconscious psyche.
At the end of the 19th and especially at the beginning of the 20th century. the hypothesis about the reality of the unconscious psyche becomes a scientific fact. This became possible thanks to the successes of experimental and theoretical psychology, which by that time had become an independent field of scientific knowledge. The theory of the unconscious mind received further fruitful development in the studies of P. Janet, F. Brentano, R. Schubert-Soldern, T. Lipps, T. Ribot, G. Carus, I. M. Sechenov and many others.
Thus, the widely held opinion about the priority of Freud (and the psychoanalytic school in general) in the study of the problem of the unconscious is actually not true. Moreover, the study of this problem was directed by Freud along a channel in which it acquired a clearly anti-scientific sound. Freudianism embodied a lot of erroneous postulates, laid the foundation for other anti-scientific concepts, such as the “theory of cellular consciousness”, “theory of the world soul”, “panpsychism”, “logical voluntarism”, “psychoid theory” and others, deeply reactionary in their essence and false in methodology.
At the same time, Freud forced us to critically reconsider some problems of psychological and philosophical science. Freudianism was, to a certain extent, a response to the limitations of traditional introspective psychology. Freud's priority lies in the fact that he was the first to explore the problem of the unconscious mind using rich clinical material as a pathopsychologist, he was the first to pose and attempt to resolve the question of the relationship between the unconscious and consciousness.
Freud himself explained the need to develop the problem of the unconscious. First of all, it was necessary, in his opinion, to understand the specifics of those behavioral acts in the regulation of which consciousness does not dominate. Further: “our unconscious is not exactly the same as the unconscious of philosophers, and besides, most philosophers do not want to know anything about the “unconscious psyche.” * As for the latter, Freud is only partly right here.
* (Freud 3. Methods and techniques of psychoanalysis. M. - Pg., 1923, p. 26.)
Freud's first postulate, on which the entire traditional theory of psychoanalysis is built, "reduces to the recognition that all mental processes are essentially unconscious..." *. It should be noted, however, that such an interpretation of the unconscious psyche not only does not contradict the views of some idealist philosophers, but, on the contrary, proceeds from them. Thomas Aquinas, Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Hartmann and many others considered the unconscious to be the primary regulator of human behavior. But the point of view of the materialists Leibniz, Fechner and others is indeed “not quite the same” as Freud himself thinks on this matter.
* (Freud 3. Lectures on introduction to psychoanalysis, vol. 1. M., 1922, p. 28.)
This basic postulate of Freud was not a conclusion from clinical and theoretical research, but an a priori thesis that predetermined the direction of the experiments themselves.
Freud claims that various kinds of human mental processes do not disappear in him without a trace, but are only obscured, “repressed” for some time into the sphere of the unconscious. As such, these phenomena have some energy potential, become, as it were, “explosive,” ready at any time to escape the control (or, as the author himself says, “censorship”) of consciousness, suppress the latter and seize power over the subject. In first place in terms of the “reserves” of such psychoenergy is the complex of sexual drives (libido), which has potentially inexhaustible possibilities in terms of the formation of mental complexes in the widest range: from pathological changes to creative inspiration. According to Freud, the basis of creative inspiration lies in the so-called “repressed unconscious.” And “repression” in his understanding is nothing more than “sexual aversion of neurotics.” This, it turns out, is where the nature of the talent and ability of the best minds of humanity lies!
Criticism of such a “theory” is not our task. Let us only note that Freud’s students and followers for the most part simply ignored these fantastic fabrications of their predecessor. Thus, the role of the sexual complex is the second fundamental principle of characterizing human behavior.
The psychic unconscious, thus, turns into Freud into an independent entity, displacing consciousness into the background, assigning it secondary roles. Elementary forms of the psyche rise above the social essence of man. The antagonism between consciousness and the unconscious is especially pronounced in the doctrine of the structure of the psyche (id, ego, super-ego) *.
* (See: Freud 3. I and IT. M., 1921.)
However, the above described forms of the unconscious psyche in Freud are not the only possible ones; There is another variety of it - “preconscious” (hidden unconscious), which, unlike the unconscious, can penetrate consciousness and is a kind of intermediary between one and the other. Thus, the structure of the psyche is composed, according to Freud, of three components: the unconscious, the preconscious and consciousness.
Such a scheme is of certain interest and creates the basis for in-depth studies of the system of relationships between these components in the psyche and clarification of the functions of each of them. However, it is here that something emerges that makes us doubt the sincerity of Freud's assurances about the desire for a positive solution to the problem posed. It turns out that it is still impossible to know the essence of unconscious and preconscious processes. Freud draws this conclusion on the basis that only that which constitutes consciousness itself can be considered knowable. The unconscious and preconscious can become the subject of research only when they move into the sphere of consciousness. But this kind of “former” unconscious and “former” preconscious have lost their specific, characteristic features and characteristics, and therefore are no longer of any interest. So, the circle closes and there is no way to penetrate it. The mystery of the unconscious psyche remains an unsolvable riddle *.
* (Noteworthy is the amazing similarity between Freud's views and the concept of Bergson, who performed exactly the same “trick” with intuition. When examined in detail, the methods of Freudianism and the methods of intuitionism turn out to be surprisingly consonant and even identical.)
So, Freud’s theory of the unconscious does not at all clarify this problem itself, not to mention the problems of the psychology of intelligence and creative thinking, and it is useless to pin any hopes on it in this regard (the latter still occurs). It is no coincidence that, according to one American scientific publication*, the most cited author in American psychological literature is Freud on all issues except physiological psychology and psychology of intelligence.
* (Sexton and Misiak. History of Psychology. N.Y., 1966.)
It is interesting to note that the prominent theorist of psychoanalysis L. Bellak, with the tacit consent of his like-minded people, was forced to admit that Freud himself undeservedly ignored many aspects of the problem of the unconscious. As paradoxical as this may sound, it seems to us that F.V. Bassin’s remark regarding the fact that Freud largely impoverished the theory of the unconscious is completely fair. This conclusion is completely legitimate and organically follows from the fundamental principles of the theory of Freudianism. The history of science knows many examples when excessive absolutization of the object of research in the sense of endowing it with special and exclusive functions, artificial isolation from the system of natural connections and relationships led to a dead end and doomed the most seemingly brilliant ideas. It seems to us that Freudianism in solving the problem of the unconscious played a role similar to that which intuitionism played in solving the problem of intuition. The consequence of this was, in essence, a complete refusal to further develop the problem of the unconscious on the part of scientific dialectical-materialist psychology. Interest in the problem in Russian psychology and philosophy has been revived only in recent years. Meanwhile, according to A. N. Leontyev, science has lost a lot by ignoring the problem of the unconscious for so long.
Freud's teaching, which has become so widespread and aroused great interest, in the opinion of many, including foreign experts, cannot lay claim to the role of a basic psychological theory, much less the role of a methodological system. I.P. Pavlov, later Fress and Baryuk spoke in favor of the opinion that Freudianism is more of a religion than a science. By the way, later the theory of psychoanalysis broke up into a number of very independent movements, among which there is one where the emphasis was transferred from the unconscious to consciousness. A number of modern concepts of psychoanalysis differ significantly and favorably from Freudianism itself.
In the 1920s, the famous Georgian philosopher and psychologist D. N. Uznadze sharply criticized the Freudian concept of the unconscious.
First of all, Uznadze was not satisfied with the fact that the Freudian unconscious does not include anything new in comparison with the phenomena of conscious, mental life, but is something like the same consciousness turned inside out. This content of the concept of the unconscious carries only negative characteristics and does not represent anything new in comparison with consciousness. Another fundamental mistake of Freud is, according to Uznadze, the assumption of the possibility of mutual transformation of consciousness and the unconscious. Unlike the Freudian unconscious, which could become consciousness, the unconscious according to Uznadze never was and cannot be.
Uznadze considered the problem of the unconscious one of the most pressing and complex. Only it is capable, in his opinion, of providing the key to understanding those processes that make possible the transition from the physical (physiological) to the mental. But it was precisely this question that all the teachings about the unconscious known at that time did not answer.
Uznadze saw the mistake of all bourgeois psychology in the wrong approach to the question of what objective reality influences the consciousness (psyche) of a person directly and directly. He is convinced of the real existence of a buffer zone between the physical and mental. This zone is the area of unconscious phenomena that have concrete, and not imaginary, as in other authors, content. “In addition to conscious * processes, something else takes place in it (the human body - V.I., A.N.) that is not itself the content of consciousness, but determines it to a large extent, lies, so to speak, at the basis of these conscious processes. We found that this is an attitude that manifests itself in virtually every living being in the process of its relationship with reality" ** .
** (Uznadze D. N. Psychological research. M., 1966, p. 179.)
Instead of the traditional psychological formula “stimulus-response”, Uznadze offers his own: “stimulus - attitude - reaction”. “Attitude,” explains A.E. Sheroziya, “is a kind of “subpsychic sphere of activity”, where the contradiction between the mental (subjective) and physical (transsubjective) is “removed”, thanks to which it is able to receive information about the slightest changes in both and in another. Moreover, ultimately, it always happens that in an installation, as a specially organized “reflection system,” the sum of information received from the “object” dominates the sum of information received from the “subject.” Hence the corresponding position Uznadze about the “object” as the main “determinant” of the state of the attitude, and through it of any psyche in general” *.
* (Sheroziya A.E. On the problem of consciousness and the unconscious mental, vol. 1. Tbilisi, 1969, p. 199.)
So, Uznadze summarizes, “the unconscious really exists among us, but this unconscious is nothing more than the attitude of the subject.
Consequently, the concept of the unconscious henceforth ceases to be only a negative concept, it acquires an entirely positive meaning and must be developed in science on the basis of ordinary research methods."
* (Uznadze D.N. Experimental studies of the psychology of attitude, Tbilisi, 1961, p. 178.)
Meanwhile, the installation is a very unusual phenomenon. It is not only “subpsychic”, but also “supraphysiological”. An attitude is something that combines the nature of both and at the same time does not belong to each of them separately. It is quite obvious that under the name of the attitude there appears some area of objective reality unknown to science, the “third nature”.
The attitude, according to Uznadze, is the readiness of a living organism for a certain type of activity in the conditions of the current situation and the needs of the organism. The main distinguishing feature of an attitude should be considered its fundamental (“pure”) unconsciousness, and this feature is of a “chronic” nature. Only under this condition, according to the author, can one get rid of the difficulties and misconceptions that characterize Freudianism. An attitude can not only never become consciousness, but is also generally incapable of manifesting itself through any of its contents. This idea of Uznadze is commented on in figurative form by A.E. Sherozia: on the path of installation to consciousness, the “red light” is always burning.
Such is the general outline the concept of the unconscious, proposed by Uznadze in the initial period of his creative activity.
Much later, at the end of the 40s, Uznadze gradually came to the conclusion that his own views regarding the identity of the psyche and consciousness were untenable. The latter, in his opinion, closes access to the disclosure of the genesis of human mental development. Consequently, one should assume the presence of some form of the psyche that does not coincide with consciousness, Uznadze believes. Consciousness cannot exhaust the entire psyche. “The emergence of conscious mental processes... is certainly preceded by a state that in no way can be considered a non-mental, only a physiological state. We call this state an attitude.”
* (Sheroziya A.E. On the problem of consciousness and the unconscious mental, vol. 1, p. 156.)
The metamorphosis of the attitude is quite obvious: from “chronic non-mentality” it is transformed into the primary (initial) state of the human psyche. The attitude not only shapes the psyche in phylogenetic and ontogenetic terms, the emergence and implementation of consciousness itself depends on it.
Acting in a fundamentally new capacity, the installation naturally acquires new features and new, much broader functions. From now on, the attitude is considered by the author as a “holistic-personal” state of the organism, the main function of which is to holistically coordinate the actions of the subject. All human behavior is connected with a system of attitudes with which he is constantly enriched (both his own and those of others). Since the attitude depends on the tasks and the conditions for their satisfaction, it naturally cannot be an innate property of the organism. However, Uznadze believes, “we have no reason to believe that, based on needs and situation, the installation of appropriate activity can arise only in a person. All animal activity also proceeds on the basis of “expedient” attitudes.
As a result of many years of research, Uznadze comes to one very important conclusion: he (let’s use the same terminology of A.E. Sheroziy) still extinguishes the “red light” on the way from attitude to consciousness. Attitude and consciousness, in his opinion, must be somehow connected, but differently than Freud connects them.
The above type of attitude is most characteristic of human and animal behavior: it (the attitude) presupposes an ordinary situation and equally ordinary forms of its implementation. It’s a different matter when the subject finds himself in an unusually difficult situation and faces new circumstances. Then significant changes occur in the traditional “stimulus...response” scheme. The simpler and more stereotypical the situation, the faster the body’s response follows. The more complex it is, the less quickly the body usually reacts. A so-called delay occurs, a kind of break in the chain of behavioral acts. A person in this situation is forced to call on the highest forms of theoretical knowledge, will, experience for help and “objectify” the current situation, making it the subject of special observation. According to Uznazde, “the ability of objectification frees a person from direct dependence on natural * attitudes and opens up for him the path of independent objective activity. It gives him the power of independent, objectively grounded influence on circumstances and control over them; it frees a person from direct, unconditional dependence on nature and helps him become a force independent of him, capable of controlling it" **.
* (It should be noted that the concept of a “natural” attitude contradicts Uznadze’s statements. Apparently, by the term “natural” he refers to an established system of skills that meet the requirements of everyday life, and not some innate attitudes given by nature. - V.I., A.N.)
** (Uznadze D. N. Psychological research, p. 286.)
Simply put, “objectification” is nothing more than the subject’s conscious approach to an objectively established system of circumstances. This is confirmed by Uznadze himself: every act of objectification is, first of all, awareness of something. In contrast to reflection in terms of attitude, in objectification we are talking about reflection built on the basis of the logical principle of identity, necessary for regulating acts of mental activity. It goes without saying, the author believes, that objectification is a specific property of the human psyche, which the animal lacks and which explains the advantage of the former over the latter.
Thus, a person, unlike an animal, has two levels of mental activity: an attitude associated with “effective, little differentiated perceptual and reproductive elements” (common with animals), and objectification, on the basis of which thinking, intellect and will are formed.
And yet, Uznadze believes, the highest forms of mental activity cannot proceed only on the basis of objectification alone. They are still based on an attitude, but not the primary one, which arises on the basis of elementary needs and is realized by the corresponding levels of the psyche, but the secondary one, formed on the basis of objectification. This setting is called "fixed". Unlike the primary attitude, it goes through the stage of awareness and is a product of a person’s conscious activity; in this case, the formula of the subject’s conscious activity takes the form: “stimulus - objectification (simultaneous liberation from primary attitudes) - secondary attitude - reaction.” Thus, the secondary attitude is a qualitatively new phase of the unconscious - the unconscious “post-conscious”. Only with this understanding can we consider that the secondary attitude represents a qualitatively new mental content, not characteristic of either the primary attitude or objectification.
The reality of the secondary attitude, as an unconscious form of the psyche, is quite acceptable. Just like skills and automated actions, a fixed attitude in its initial stage develops as a conscious (“objectified” by consciousness) action. However, later these actions completely escape the control of consciousness. Moreover, attempts to bring them back under conscious control (for example, to understand the order of purely mechanical movements of the hands when playing the piano) at best turned out to be fruitless, at worst - led to serious mental disorders. The concept of a secondary attitude only has real meaning when the attitude returns to the phase of unconscious activity. According to Uznadze, this is how it should be. This proves the fact that there is no impenetrable barrier between consciousness and attitude.
This, in general terms, is the essence of the theory of attitude - one of the most complex and controversial teachings on the problem of the unconscious, which, according to experts, occupies a very special place not only in relation to related theories of Western philosophy and psychology, but also in domestic science. As a result, attitude theory is not always objectively and impartially covered in psychological and philosophical literature. In this case, there are two extreme trends. Some authors categorically deny the positive value of Uznadze’s teachings; others, as a rule, students and followers of the scientist, on the contrary, do their best to obscure and smooth out objectively existing contradictions, allow obvious stretches where this simply contradicts the facts, and try to conjecture a lot for the author, often to the detriment of the theory itself.
As for the general positive assessment of the attitude theory, it depends on whether the author’s initial and later concepts on the problem of the unconscious are combined. If yes, then it is not difficult to show that Uznadze, as a result of his many years of research, refuted his own postulating principles and came to the triumph of those ideas that he was supposed to refute. This is precisely the argument that many opponents of attitude theory use.
One can, however, base the assessment of this doctrine on other principles: take as a basis the author’s views related to the final stage of his scientific research.
It goes without saying that an early concept that contradicts these views cannot simply be ignored. By combining these two concepts, one can get a clear picture of the historical and logical evolution of Uznadze’s views in his desire to reveal one of the most interesting and unknown secrets of the human psyche.
Turning to mental reality, Freud tried to answer one of the essential questions that one way or another faced psychoanalysis. If, being unconscious, mental processes do not fall into the field of consciousness, then how can a person learn about them and is awareness of the unconscious possible in principle?
Like most philosophers, Freud believed that all human knowledge is somehow connected with consciousness. Strictly speaking, knowledge always acts as co-knowledge. Therefore, he proceeded from the fact that the unconscious can be known only by becoming conscious.
It can be assumed that cognitive processes occurring in the depths of the human psyche unconsciously reach the surface of consciousness or, conversely, consciousness somehow breaks through to them. But such an assumption does not contribute to the answer to the question posed, since, according to Freud, both possibilities do not reflect the real state of affairs. To get out of the deadlock, the founder of psychoanalysis tried to find another possibility of transferring internal processes into a sphere where access to their awareness opens up.
Freud believes that the question "How does anything become conscious?" it is more appropriate to put it in the form “How does something become preconscious?” For him, conscious, unconscious and preconscious ideas are not records of the same content in different mental systems. The first include subject representations, formalized in an appropriate verbal manner. The second is material that remains unknown, i.e. unknown, and consisting of only objective ideas. The third is the possibility of entering into a connection between objective representations and verbal ones. Based on this, the process of recognizing the unconscious is transferred from the sphere of consciousness to the region of the preconscious.
In classical psychoanalysis we are talking about the translation of the repressed unconscious into the preconscious. This translation is supposed to be carried out through specially developed psychoanalytic techniques, when a person’s consciousness seems to remain in its place, the unconscious does not rise directly to the level of the conscious, and the system of the preconscious becomes the most active, within which it becomes possible to transform the repressed unconscious into the preconscious.
Recognition of the unconscious correlates with the possibilities of meeting objective ideas with linguistic constructions expressed in verbal form. Hence the importance in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis that Freud attached to the role of language in revealing the meaningful characteristics of the unconscious.
The founder of psychoanalysis proceeds from the fact that verbal representations are traces of memories. In accordance with this, knowledge of the unconscious is based on the recognition of the presence in a person of such knowledge, about which he himself knows nothing until the chain of memories of real or imaginary events of the past that took place in the life of an individual or in the history of the development of the human race is restored.
Cognition of the unconscious becomes in psychoanalysis nothing more than recollection, the restoration in a person’s memory of previously existing knowledge. Psychoanalytically understood awareness turns out to be the resurrection of knowledge-memory, repressed into the unconscious due to the reluctance or inability of a person to recognize behind the symbolic language those internal drives and desires that are often associated with hidden demonic forces.
From Freud's point of view, in a normal, healthy person the process of cognition occurs as if automatically. If necessary, a person can always restore past events in his memory, mentally running through the traces of memories. Even if he is not aware of his internal mental processes, does not understand the meaning of what is happening, does not see logical connections between the past and the present, this does not affect his life in any way. For such a person, possible conflict situations find their resolution thanks to the mechanism of sublimation (switching psychic energy from socially unacceptable to socially approved goals) at the level of symbolic ideas that are activated in dreams or artistic creativity. Another thing is a neurotic person, whose psyche is in the grip of the repressed unconscious. The logical connections between the past and the present are disrupted, as a result of which ignorance becomes pathogenic, causing doubts, torment and suffering. Strictly speaking, neurosis is, according to Freud, a consequence of ignorance or insufficient information about mental processes that one should know about.
In order to transform pathogenic ignorance into normal knowledge, to transfer the repressed unconscious into the preconscious, and then into consciousness, it is necessary to restore broken internal connections, help the neurotic to understand the meaning of what is happening and thereby bring him to an understanding of the true reasons that caused his suffering. In principle, this is possible, since there is nothing random in the human psyche. Every mental act, every unconscious process has a certain meaning, the identification of which seems to be an important task of psychoanalysis.
By meaning, Freud understands the purpose, tendency, intention of any mental act, as well as its place and meaning among other mental processes. Therefore, the object of study in psychoanalysis becomes all seemingly inconspicuous, seemingly secondary unconscious manifestations. If in traditional philosophical teachings attention was paid mainly to large-scale, clearly expressed phenomena, then in psychoanalysis the emphasis shifts to the plane of studying the “waste of life”, which previously did not arouse serious interest among philosophers due to the unattractiveness of the topic or the insignificance of unconscious processes.
Freud believes that knowledge of the unconscious mental is possible and necessary within the framework of the material that most often remains beyond the threshold of the consciousness of researchers. Such material is, first of all, dreams, erroneous actions, including slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, forgetting names, loss of objects, various kinds of ceremonies and daily rituals - in a word, everything that relates to the daily life of people.
The meaning of a person’s unconscious motives, drives and impulses is clarified by a scrupulous and labor-intensive clearing of the “waste of life” in order to get to the fundamental principles of human existence. The unconscious is not silent. It declares itself especially loudly in dreams. Manifests itself in allegorical symbolic images. It should be noted that most often a person does not understand what the unconscious is saying in dreams. The human consciousness does not perceive the voice of the unconscious, since they speak different languages. Therefore, Freud focuses his efforts on deciphering the language of the unconscious, developing a psychoanalytic dictionary in which the translation of unconscious symbolism into the language of everyday consciousness is carried out.
Decoding the language of the unconscious is correlated in classical psychoanalysis with the search for the sexual roots that underlie human motivational activity. The search for the meaning of intrapsychic processes ends with an indication of deep-seated sexual desires that predetermine human behavior in real life.
The unconscious is learned by plunging into the depths of human existence. Clarification of the present occurs by reducing it to the drives of a person in the past, to those drives that stem from eros. The past for Freud is both the early childhood of an individual and the primitive state of the human race. The study and interpretation of dreams, being an important means for understanding the unconscious, clearly demonstrates the origins of human unconscious desires, which have their roots in the ontogenetic prehistoric period, i.e. in the childhood of the individual, and in the phylogenetic prehistoric era, i.e. into the childhood of humanity.
Turning to the childhood of an individual and humanity as a whole, Freud correlates the initial unconscious drives of a human being with sexual relations in the family and primitive community. The knowledge of the unconscious ends with the discovery of the Oedipus complex, which, according to Freud, having arisen in the early stages of human civilization, makes itself felt in the lives of modern people, since the structure of the personality contains the unconscious It, on the basis of which the triangular arrangement of the Oedipus relationship occurs (father-mother-child ), and the Super-ego as the heir of the Oedipus complex.
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