The Structure of the Unconscious

Conscious, Unconscious, Preconscious
The starting point for this investigation is provided by a fact without parallel, which
defies all explanation or description--the fact of consciousness. Nevertheless, if
anyone speaks of consciousness, we know immediately and from our own most
personal experience what is meant by it. Many people, both inside and outside the
science of psychology, are satisfied with the assumption that consciousness alone is
mental, and nothing then remains for psychology but to discriminate in the
phenomenology of the mind between perceptions, feelings, intellective processes and
volitions. It is generally agreed, however, that these conscious processes do not form
unbroken series which are complete in themselves; so that there is no alternative to
assuming that there are physical or somatic processes which accompany the mental
ones and which must admittedly be more complete than the mental series, since some
of them have conscious processes parallel to them but others have not. It thus seems
natural to lay the stress in psychology upon these somatic processes, to see in them the
true essence of what is mental and to try to arrive at some other assessment of the
conscious processes. The majority of philosophers, however, as well as many other
people, dispute this position and declare that the notion of a mental thing being
unconscious is self-contradictory.
But it is precisely this that psychoanalysis is obliged to assert, and this is its second
fundamental hypothesis. It explains the supposed somatic accessory processes as
being what is essentially mental and disregards for the moment the quality of
consciousness....
We are soon led to make an important division in this unconscious. Some processes
become conscious easily; they may then cease to be conscious, but can become
conscious once more without any trouble: as people say, they can be reproduced or
remembered. This reminds us that consciousness is in general a very highly fugitive
condition. What is conscious is conscious only for a moment. If our perceptions do
not confirm this, the contradiction is merely an apparent one. It is explained by the
fact that the stimuli of perception can persist for some time so that in the course of it
the perception of them can be repeated. The whole position can be clearly seen from
the conscious perception of our intellective processes; it is true that these may persist,
but they may just as easily pass in a flash. Everything unconscious that behaves in this
way, that can easily exchange the unconscious condition for the conscious one, is
therefore better described as "capable of entering consciousness," or as preconscious.
Experience has taught us that there are hardly any mental processes, even of the most
complicated kind, which cannot on occasion remain preconscious, although as a rule
they press forward, as we say, into consciousness. There are other mental processes or
mental material which have no such easy access to consciousness, but which must be

inferred, discovered, and translated into conscious form in the manner that has been
described. It is for such material that we reserve the name of the unconscious proper.
Thus we have attributed three qualities to mental processes: they are either conscious,
preconscious, or unconscious. The division between the three classes of material
which have these qualities is neither absolute nor permanent. What is preconscious
becomes conscious, as we have seen, without any activity on our part; what is
unconscious can, as a result of our efforts, be made conscious, though in the process
we may have an impression that we are overcoming what are often very strong
resistances. When we make an attempt of this kind upon someone else, we ought not
to forget that the conscious filling up of the breaks in his perceptions--the construction
which we are offering him--does not so far mean that we have made conscious in him
the unconscious material in question. All that is so far true is that the material is
present in his mind in two versions, first in the conscious reconstruction that he has
just received and secondly in its original unconscious condition.

Id, Ego, Super-ego
[The id is] . . . a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement. We suppose that it is
somewhere in direct contact with somatic processes, and takes over from them
instinctual needs and gives them mental expression, but we cannot say in what
substratum this contact is made. These instincts fill it with energy, but it has no
organisation and no unified will, only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction for the
instinctual needs, in accordance With the pleasure-principle. The laws of logic-above all, the law of contradiction--do not hold for processes in the id. Contradictory
impulses exist side by side without neutralising each other or drawing apart; at most
they combine in compromise formations under the overpowering economic pressure
towards discharging their energy. There is nothing in the id which can be compared to
negation, and we are astonished to find in it an exception to the philosophers' assertion
that space and time are necessary forms of our mental acts. In the id there is nothing
corresponding to the idea of time, no recognition of the passage of time, and (a thing
which is very remarkable and awaits adequate attention in philosophic thought) no
alteration of mental processes by the passage of time. Conative impulses which have
never got beyond the id, and even impressions which have been pushed down into the
id by repression, are virtually immortal and are preserved for whole decades as though
they had only recently occurred. They can only be recognised as belonging to the past,
deprived of their significance, and robbed of their charge of energy, after they have
been made conscious by the work of analysis, and no small part of the therapeutic
effect of analytic treatment rests upon this fact.

It is constantly being borne in upon me that we have made far too little use of our
theory of the indubitable fact that the repressed remains unaltered by the passage of
time. This seems to offers us the possibility of an approach to some really profound
truths. But I myself have made no further progress here.
Naturally, the id knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. The economic, or, if
you prefer, the quantitative factor, which is so closely bound up with the pleasureprinciple, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge,--that, in
our view, is all that the id contains. It seems, indeed, as if the energy of these
instinctual impulses is in a different condition from that in which it is found in the
other regions of the mind. It must be far more fluid and more capable of being
discharged, for otherwise we should not have those displacements and condensations,
which are so characteristic of the id and which are so completely independent of the
qualities of what is cathected....
As regards a characterization of the ego, in so far as it is to be distinguished from the
id and the super-ego, we shall get on better if we turn our attention to the relation
between it and the most superficial portion of the mental apparatus; which we call the
Pcpt-cs (perceptual-conscious) system. This system is directed on to the external
world, it mediates perceptions of it, and in it is generated, while it is functioning, the
phenomenon of consciousness. It is the sense-organ of the whole apparatus, receptive,
moreover, not only of excitations from without but also of such as proceed from the
interior of the mind. One can hardly go wrong in regarding the ego as that part of the
id which has been modified by its proximity to the external world and the influence
that the latter has had on it, and which serves the purpose of receiving stimuli and
protecting the organism from them, like the cortical layer with which a particle of
living substance surrounds itself. This relation to the external world is decisive for the
ego. The ego has taken over the task of representing the external world for the id, and
so of saving it; for the id, blindly striving to gratify its instincts in complete disregard
of the superior strength of outside forces, could not otherwise escape annihilation. In
the fulfilment of this function, the ego has to observe the external world and preserve
a true picture of it in the memory traces left by its perceptions, and, by means of the
reality-test, it has to eliminate any element in this picture of the external world which
is a contribution from internal sources of excitation. On behalf of the id, the ego
controls the path of access to motility, but it interpolates between desire and action the
procrastinating factor of thought, during which it makes use of the residues of
experience stored up in memory. In this way it dethrones the pleasure- principle,
which exerts undisputed sway over the processes in the id, and substitutes for it the
reality-principle, which promises greater security and greater success.
The relation to time, too, which is so hard to describe, is communicated to the ego by
the perceptual system; indeed it can hardly be doubted that the mode in which this

system works is the source of the idea of time. What, however, especially marks the
ego out in contradistinction to the id, is a tendency to synthesise its contents, to bring
together and unify its mental processes which is entirely absent from the id. When we
come to deal presently with the instincts in mental life, I hope we shall succeed in
tracing this fundamental characteristic of the ego to its source. It is this alone that
produces that high degree of organisation which the ego needs for its highest
achievements. The ego advances from the function of perceiving instincts to that of
controlling them, but the latter is only achieved through the mental representative of
the instinct becoming subordinated to a larger organisation, and finding its place in a
coherent unity. In popular language, we may say that the ego stands for reason and
circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed passions....
The proverb tells us that one cannot serve two masters at once. The poor ego has a
still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and has to do its best to
reconcile the claims and demands of all three. These demands are always divergent
and often seem quite incompatible; no wonder that the ego so frequently gives way
under its task. The three tyrants are the external world, the super-ego and the id. When
one watches the efforts of the ego to satisfy them all, or rather, to obey them all
simultaneously, one cannot regret having personified the ego, and established it as a
separate being. It feels itself hemmed in on three sides and threatened by three kinds
of danger, towards which it reacts by developing anxiety when it is too hard pressed.
Having originated in the experiences of the perceptual system, it is designed to
represent the demands of the external world, but it also wishes to be a loyal servant of
the id, to remain upon good terms with the id, to recommend itself to the id as an
object, and to draw the id's libido on to itself. In its attempt to mediate between the id
and reality, it is often forced to clothe the Ucs. commands of the id with its own Pcs.
rationalisations, to gloss over the conflicts between the id and reality, and with
diplomatic dishonesty to display a pretended regard for reality, even when the id
persists in being stubborn and uncompromising. On the other hand, its every
movement is watched by the severe super-ego, which holds up certain norms of
behaviour, without regard to any difficulties coming from the id and the external
world; and if these norms are not acted up to, it punishes the ego with the feelings of
tension which manifest themselves as a sense of inferiority and guilt. In this way,
goaded on by the id, hemmed in by the super-ego, and rebuffed by reality, the ego
struggles to cope with its economic task of reducing the forces and influences which
work in it and upon it to some kind of harmony; and we may well understand how it is
that we so often cannot repress the cry: "Life is not easy." When the ego is forced to
acknowledge its weakness, it breaks out into anxiety: reality anxiety in face of the
external world, normal anxiety in face of the super- ego, and neurotic anxiety in face
of the strength of the passions in the id.

I have represented the structural relations within the mental personality, as I have
explained them to you, in a simple diagram, which I here reproduce.
You will observe how the super-ego goes down into the id; as the heir to the Oedipus
complex it has, after all, intimate connections with the id. It lies further from the
perceptual system than the ego. The id only deals with the external world through the
medium of the ego, at least in this diagram. It is certainly still too early to say how far
the drawing is correct; in one respect I know it is not. The space taken up by the
unconscious id ought to be incomparably greater than that given to the ego or to the
preconscious. You must, if you please, correct that in your imagination.
And now, in concluding this certainly rather exhausting and perhaps not very
illuminating account, I must add a warning. When you think of this dividing up of the
personality into ego, super-ego and id, you must not imagine sharp dividing lines such
as are artificially drawn in the field of political geography. We cannot do justice to the
characteristics of the mind by means of linear contours, such as occur in a drawing or
in a primitive painting, but we need rather the areas of colour shading off into one
another that are to be found in modern pictures. After we have made our separations,
we must allow what we have separated to merge again. Do not judge too harshly of a
first attempt at picturing a thing so elusive as the human mind. It is very probable that
the extent of these differentiations varies very greatly from person to person; it is
possible that their function itself may vary, and that they may at times undergo a
process of involution. This seems to be particularly true of the most insecure and,
from the phylogenetic point of view, the most recent of them, the differentiation
between the ego and the superego. It is also incontestable that the same thing can
come about as a result of mental disease. It can easily be imagined, too, that certain
practices of mystics may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between the
different regions of the mind, so that, for example, the perceptual system becomes
able to grasp relations in the deeper layers of the ego and in the id which would
otherwise be inaccessible to it. Whether such a procedure can put one in possession of
ultimate truths, from which all good will flow, may be safely doubted. All the same,
we must admit that the therapeutic efforts of psycho-analysis have chosen much the
same method of approach. For their object is to strengthen the ego, to make it more
independent of the super- ego, to widen its field of vision, and so to extend its
organisation that it can take over new portions of the id. Where id was, there shall ego
be.