Sigmund Freud and Conscious Installment #2

Christian Nash

Philosophy 1030

Dr. Oliver

Installment #2

Sigmund Freud and Consciousness

            To understand how the conscious and unconscious coexist, a common example is to look at a Freudian slip.  A Freudian slip is involuntarily substituting words that reveal deeper, repressed feelings you are not trying to talk about (“Freudian”). According to Freud’s psychoanalytic view, it was not just a slip up in words, but your unconscious mind, forces outside of your awareness, directing your behavior. Freud’s work was controversial among psychologists and philosophers. It “provoked a denial from philosophers for whom consciousness and mental were identical and they could never conceive of an absurdity such as an unconscious mental state” (Sousa). He believed that although you are unable to reach your unconscious mind, your repressed feelings may come up in dreams or slip ups of words (Kendra). However, without Freud’s work, there may not have been major philosophical developments made, for example in William James’, The Principles of Psychology, he uses the idea of “unconscious mentality” to support his theories that hold mental states as “empirically analyzable compounds” (Sousa).

            Freud chose to use the idea of an iceberg because your conscious and preconscious mind are just the tip of awareness. Your unconscious mind is your “awareness below the surface.” Using this metaphor, the preconscious and conscious mind are the tip. The conscious mind is used to read words on paper, and the preconscious mind is used recall memories, things not currently in the conscious mind, but retrievable. That leaves the unconscious mind to be responsible for the underlying information such as, “memories, thoughts, feelings, and information that is too painful, embarrassing, shameful, or distressing for conscious awareness,” (Kendra). Freud’s argument was that although you could not reach your unconscious mind, it still played a role in your conscious decision making.

            Freud believed that every choice you make is in some way motivated by your unconscious, and to live in society, you must repress certain urges and impulses. These impulses could not go unnoticed, so Freud suggested that they resurface in disguised forms, such as dreams. While conscious, “the impulses and desires of the id are suppressed by the superego. Through dreams, you are able to get a glimpse into your unconscious or the id. Because your guards are down during the dream state, your unconscious has the opportunity to act out and express the hidden desires of the id” (“Sigmund”). According to Freud, your desires could sometimes too disturbing, possibly psychologically harmful, that your mind censors these ideas and represents them symbolically, and the reason you have trouble remembering your dreams is because your superego is protecting you from your unconscious mind at work. “Freud is particularly preoccupied with sexual content in dreams. He believes that sex is the root cause of what occurs in your dreams. According to Freud, every long slender or elongated object (i.e. knife, cigar, gun, etc) represents the phallus, while any cavity or receptacle (bowl, cave, tunnel, etc) denotes the female genitalia” (“Sigmund”).

Works cited:

        “Freudian Slip.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FreudianSlip.

        Kendra Cherry | Reviewed by Steven Gans, MD. “What Are Freud's 3 Levels of Mind?”Verywell, www.verywell.com/the-conscious-and-unconscious-mind-2795946.

        “Sigmund Freud.” Dream Moods: Dream Theories: Sigmund Freud, 2 June 2014, www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/freud.htm.

        Sousa, Avinash De. “Freudian Theory and Consciousness: A Conceptual Analysis**.” Mens Sana Monographs, Medknow Publications, 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115290/.

Installment #1:

http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/12/sigmund-freud-and-consciousness.html#comment-form

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