Freud and the Unconscious

• Freud's exploration of the unconscious is his greatest contribution to personality theory.
• Freud insisted that people are primarily motivated by drives with little to no awareness.
• Mental life is divided into the unconscious and the conscious.
• The unconscious has two levels: the unconscious proper and the preconscious.
• The three levels of mental life are used to designate both a process and a location in Freudian psychology.
• The existence of a specific location is hypothetical, without real existence within the body.
• Freud spoke of the unconscious, as well as unconscious processes.

Unconscious

• The unconscious contains drives, urges, or instincts beyond our awareness that motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions.
• People may be unaware of the mental processes behind their overt behaviors.
• The unconscious is not available to the conscious mind.
• Freud believed that the unconscious's existence could be proved indirectly.
• The unconscious explains the meaning behind dreams, slips of the tongue, and repression (forgetting).
• Dreams are a rich source of unconscious material.
• Freud believed childhood experiences could appear in adult dreams without conscious recollection.
• Unconscious processes often enter consciousness after being disguised or distorted to elude censorship.
• Freud used the analogy of a guardian censoring passage between the unconscious and preconscious to prevent anxiety-producing memories from entering awareness.
• Unconscious images must be disguised to pass the primary censor to enter the conscious level.
• A final censor watches the passageway between the preconscious and the conscious.
• Memories entering the conscious mind are seen as relatively pleasant, non-threatening experiences.
• Images often have strong sexual or aggressive motifs, as childhood sexual and aggressive behaviors are frequently punished or suppressed.
• Punishment and suppression create anxiety, which stimulates repression, forcing unwanted experiences into the unconscious as a defense against pain.
• A portion of our unconscious originates from ancestors' experiences passed down through generations of repetition.
• Freud called these inherited unconscious images phylogenetic endowment.
• Freud's phylogenetic endowment is similar to Carl Jung's collective unconscious.
• Jung emphasized the collective unconscious.
• Freud relied on inherited dispositions as a last resort.
• Freud turned to collectively inherited experiences to fill individual experience gaps when explanations built on individual experiences were inadequate.
• Freud used phylogenetic endowment to explain concepts like the Oedipus complex and castration anxiety.
• Unconscious drives appear in consciousness only after transformations.
• A person may express either erotic or hostile urges by teasing or joking.
• The original drive (sex or aggression) remains disguised and hidden.
• The unconscious of the first person directly influences the unconscious of the second.
• Both people gain some satisfaction of sexual or aggressive urges, but are not conscious of the motive behind the teasing or joking.
• The unconscious mind of one person can communicate with the unconscious of another without either person being aware.
• The unconscious does not mean inactive or dormant.
• Forces in the unconscious constantly strive to become conscious, even in altered forms.
• Unconscious ideas motivate people.
• A son's hostility toward his father may appear as ostentatious affection.