1. 1
CLINICAL NOTES
ON THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
Sigmund Freud (1912). ‘A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis,’ On
Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis translated by James Strachey and edited
by Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 45-57.
Sigmund Freud (1923). ‘Consciousness and What is Unconscious,’ On
Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis translated by James Strachey and edited
by Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 351-356.
These clinical notes summarize what Sigmund Freud meant by ‘consciousness’ and
‘the unconscious.’
While these terms are commonly used in clinical work and psychoanalytic theory, it
is easy to conflate what these terms mean because Freud described the psyche from
three points of view.
These are the topographical, structural, and economic points of view.
In the first of the two papers cited above, Freud is describing the unconscious from a
topographical point of view.
The second paper is describing the unconscious from the structural point of view.
The economic point of view relates to Freud’s libido theory. It describes how the
psyche deals with flows of sexual energy that is described as the libido. I will
describe the libido theory on another occasion.
This paper will first describe the topographical and structural theories of the psyche.

2. 2
It may appear at first sight that these papers describe the psyche from completely
different points of view. But that is not really the case.
There is considerable overlap between these two descriptions of the psyche.
So, for instance, in both papers Freud emphasizes the fact that the psyche is split
between consciousness and the unconscious.
This is the first and the most important premise in psychoanalysis.
That is why it is important to understand what is at stake in the Freudian model of
the psyche.
Freud begins by noting that the objects of consciousness are fleeting. The objects of
consciousness are affects, thoughts, and ideas. These objects come and go from
consciousness in a way that is difficult for consciousness to control.
A thought that is fully conscious will suddenly disappear. A thought that was
‘latent’ (i.e. pre-conscious) will then come into consciousness and then take up a lot
of room in the subject’s consciousness.
The main thing to note is that thoughts come unbidden. It is not as if the subject is
consciously seeking a thought from the recesses of the psyche. More often than not,
it is the thought that seeks the subject.
The propensity of the psyche to deal with thoughts in its own fashion is the
characteristic feature of the human mind. This is the process that is embodied in acts
of ‘free-association’ on the couch.
Those who doubt the existence of the unconscious have to but attempt to free-
associate on the couch.
That will give them a greater sense of conviction than anything else that there are
dimensions of the psyche that they are not fully acquainted with.
That is also why the patient has difficulty in free-associating when he is approaching
topics that pertain to his areas of repression. The closer the patient is to these areas of
repression, the greater the levels of resistance to the process of free-association.
The main reason that I have juxtaposed these two papers together is that Freud had
to find a way of relating these models himself since neither of the models could
describe the attributes of the psyche in its entirety.
The theoretical problem at stake is whether the structural model represses the
discovery of the unconscious by Freud himself - as his critics allege or whether the
problem is that they have not read the structural model carefully enough.

3. 3
These clinical notes bring out the fact that Freud took enormous effort to situate
what exactly he meant by ‘the id, the ego, and the super-ego’ in relation to the
unconscious.
Freud states almost categorically that the unconscious is the primary category.
All the psychic agencies in the structural model of the psyche are in fact carved out
of the unconscious. So it is not his conscious intent to repress the discovery of the
unconscious.
The conflation of these two models – the topographical and structural - is akin to the
conflation of the terms unconscious and repression.
Freud points out in these papers that everything that is repressed is unconscious, but not
everything that is unconscious is repressed. Likewise, the terms ‘primal repression’ and
‘repression proper’ are conflated.
When somebody is described as ‘repressed,’ the assumption seems to be that there
are subjects who are not repressed at all. There are no such subjects unless they
happen to be psychotics or perverts.
The problem is not with the act of repression but with the severity of repression and
on whether primal repression was successful or not in fending off thoughts
incompatible with the ego from consciousness.
The importance of repression and its derivatives is related to the fact that there is no
direct communication between these systems.
In order to make sense of how these systems relate to each other, what is required is
a theory of psychic distortion and resistance to the interpretation of this distortion.
So when Jacques Lacan compares the unconscious to a language, what he means by
that is the need to find a way of thinking past these distortions in order to translate
between the two psychic systems.
While attempting to translate between these two systems, the analyst encounters the
‘formations of the unconscious.’ A great deal of psychanalytic theory then is an
attempt to relate these formations to Freudian meta-psychology.
Another important difference relates to the difference between the structure and
function of the unconscious. Both these dimensions are important. The unconscious
is misunderstood as being either a psychic structure or as a psychic function.
Compare this with the term ‘repression.’ This is mainly understood as a function
which is separated between the primal phase and the secondary phase.

4. 4
That is why Freud points out here that the ‘repressed is the prototype of the
unconscious,’ but not the unconscious as such.
The lay-person misunderstands analysis because he conflates the main categories in
the three descriptions of the psyche in Freud.
These clinical notes have attempted to disambiguate these categories in order to
facilitate a more accurate interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN