The Unconscious (Ideas in Psychoanalysis)

✍ Scribed by Phil Mollon

• Publisher: Totem Books
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 81
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Freud's discovery of the dynamic unconscious is arguably his most important contribution to our understanding of the human mind. While others before him had realised that not all mental activity is conscious, it was Freud's aim to study in detail both the content and the alien mode of thinking of the unconscious mind. Dreams burst upon us, playing enigmatically upon our inner theatre, dense with obscure meaning. Freud showed the continuity between dreams, puzzling neurotic and psychotic symptoms, slips of the tongue and a multitude of errors which reveal the existence of the unconscious mind. The author explains that while we may have illusions of autonomy and conscious awareness of our motivations, psychoanalysis reveals that we are often "lived by" the unconscious which dwells within, largely hidden during daylight, but revealing its controlling influence within the dramas of sleep. Immensely creative yet powerfully destructive, the unconscious can be a source of guidance as well as subversion evoking both awe and dread.

✦ Table of Contents

The lewd interloper......Page 4
Is the unconscious a valid concept?......Page 5
Farts, stains and lies......Page 10
Dreams......Page 16
How dreams represent ideas: condensation and displacement......Page 29
The cognitive unconscious: the mad logician and the mushroom of meaning......Page 36
The unconscious mode of thought in psychotic states......Page 42
Psychotic expulsion......Page 48
Unconscious representations in everyday life......Page 49
Warnings and advice from the unconscious......Page 53
Unconscious representations of frightening reality......Page 55
Various realms of the unconscious......Page 57
The neuropsychological unconscious......Page 63
A hierarchy of consciousness or multiple consciousnesses?......Page 66
The infinite unconscious......Page 68
Notes......Page 73
Select bibliography......Page 81