Unconscious

The adjective is very widely used to refer to any element of mental activity that is not present within the field of the conscious mind at a given moment.

The noun-form is now usually used in the psychoanalytic sense, and refers to the unconscious system described by Freud's first topography of the psyche.

In the second topography, the unconscious system is replaced by the agency of the id, but [Freud]] continues to use "unconscious" as an adjective.

Although Freud is often credited with the discovery of the unconscious, it is clear tha tthe notion of a non-conscious part of the mind has a long history in both philosophy and the psychological sciences.

A distinction has been made between the Freudian unconscious and Jung's concept of a 'collective unconscious'.

--

Freud's initial desriptions of the unconscious are based upon his analysis of dreams (1900).

Dreams are described as the royal road the the unconscious because they represent the fulfilment of unconscious wishes that are inadmissible to the preconscious-conscious system, usually because of their sexual nature.

Further confirmation of the existence of an unconscious system is provided by Freud's study of phenomena such as parapraxis (101) and jokes (1905b); everyday phenomena such as slips of the tongue, bungled actions, lapses of memory and the inability to recall names all point to the existence of the unconscious.