Before Sigmund Freud, psychology and philosophy tended to equate the "psyche" with "consciousness." It was believed that the human being was a rational master of his own house, fully aware of his motivations and desires. Freud subverted this logic, demonstrating that the greater part of our mental life occurs "beneath the surface," operating under its own laws that escape the control of reason.
The Unconscious is not merely a "storehouse" of forgotten memories, but a dynamic and pulsating instance that dictates behaviors, choices, and symptoms. To understand it, we must abandon the idea that we are unitary beings and accept that we are divided.
The Genesis of the Concept and the Freudian First Topography
The discovery of the unconscious was not a sudden event, but a clinical deduction. While treating hysterical patients at the end of the 19th century, Freud realized that their physical symptoms (paralysis, blindness, coughs) had no detectable organic cause. Through hypnosis and, subsequently, free association, he noted that when a patient managed to verbally express a trauma or a repressed desire, the symptom disappeared. This led him to the conclusion that there were psychic processes operating "unconsciously."
In his first topography (a spatial model of the mind), Freud divided the psychic apparatus into three systems: Conscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious. The Conscious is merely the tip of the iceberg, receiving information from the external and internal worlds. The Preconscious contains elements that are not in consciousness now but can be easily accessed (like a friend's name or what you had for dinner). The Unconscious, however, is a system separated by an insurmountable barrier: repression (recalque).
Unconscious material is composed of representations of drives (pulsões) and desires that consciousness deemed unacceptable, usually for moral or traumatic reasons. These elements are "expelled" from consciousness, but they do not cease to exist. They continue to exert constant pressure to manifest, like steam trying to escape a pressure cooker. The unconscious, therefore, is timeless; a childhood trauma remains there, alive and operative, as if it had happened today.
The Language of the Unconscious and Compromise Formations
If the unconscious is "closed" and repressed, how do we know it exists? Freud argued that the unconscious cannot be observed directly, but rather through its "formations." Since repressed content seeks expression but consciousness (the censorship) prevents it, a negotiation occurs: the compromise formation (formação de compromisso). The unconscious desire disguises itself to pass through censorship, manifesting in distorted forms.
The primary gateways to the unconscious are:
Dreams: Called by Freud "the royal road to the knowledge of the unconscious." During sleep, censorship relaxes, allowing desires to appear, albeit in symbolic clothing (the manifest content of the dream hides the latent content).
Parapraxes (Freudian Slips): When we substitute one word for another or forget a familiar name. In psychoanalysis, there are no accidental errors; there is an unconscious intention that has "broken through" the blockage.
Jokes (Witz): Jokes and puns that allow the expression of aggression or sexuality in a socially acceptable way.
Symptoms: In the psychoanalytic view, the neurotic symptom is a coded message from the unconscious. The patient's suffering is the price paid for keeping a repressed desire out of consciousness.
The unconscious possesses its own logic, which Freud called the Primary Process. Unlike rational logic (Secondary Process), in the unconscious, Displacement (the emotional charge of one idea shifts to another) and Condensation (several ideas fuse into one) reign supreme. There is no contradiction, no "no," and no notion of chronological time.
Drive, Desire, and the Dynamics of the Id, Ego, and Superego
With the advancement of his theory, around 1923, Freud introduced the second topography, which complements the first. Here, he defines three agencies: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. The Unconscious is now viewed in a more complex manner.
The Id is the reservoir of the drives, operating entirely under the pleasure principle. It is fully unconscious and seeks the immediate gratification of sexual and aggressive impulses (Eros and Thanatos). The Superego is the heir to the Oedipus complex, representing social norms and parental ideals; part of it is unconscious and manifests as severe guilt or demands for perfection. The Ego, in turn, attempts to balance the demands of the Id, the restrictions of the Superego, and the pressures of Reality.
In this scenario, the Unconscious is not only what has been repressed (the "Repressed Unconscious") but also the raw drive forces that never reached consciousness. It is a zone of permanent conflict. Mental health, for classical psychoanalysis, is not the elimination of the unconscious, which is impossible, but rather making conscious what was unconscious ("Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" / "Where Id was, there Ego shall be"), allowing the subject greater autonomy over their drives instead of simply being "lived" by them.
The Unconscious Structured Like a Language in Lacan
Years after Freud’s death, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan proposed a "return to Freud," reinterpreting the unconscious in light of Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics. For Lacan, the famous dictum "the unconscious is structured like a language" redefines everything. He argues that the unconscious is not biological chaos, but a system of signifiers.
If the unconscious functions through displacement and condensation (Freud’s terms), Lacan translates them into the rhetorical figures of Metonymy and Metaphor. Human desire is never for a final, absolute object, but slides from signifier to signifier. The unconscious is the "discourse of the Other," meaning our desires and our very constitution as subjects depend on the language and culture that precede us.
Lacan introduces the idea that the unconscious is not a deep place inside the individual, but something that occurs "between" subjects, in the failures of speech, at the moment language stumbles. It is in this "gap" or opening that the unconscious manifests. For him, the subject is not the master of what they say, but an effect of language. This reinforces the idea of decentering: the "I" (Ego) is an illusory construction (the Mirror Stage), while the truth of the subject resides in the chain of unconscious signifiers.
Contemporary Relevance and Clinical Practice
Understanding the unconscious is fundamental to understanding why we repeat self-destructive patterns, why we fall in love with certain people, or why we feel anxious without an apparent reason. In the psychoanalytic clinic, the unconscious is the object of work. The analyst does not seek to "educate" the patient or give advice, but rather to listen to what is being said "between the lines."
By inviting the patient to free association, to say whatever comes to mind without judgment, the psychoanalyst allows the logic of the primary process to emerge. Through transference (the projection of parental figures onto the analyst), the patient relives their unconscious conflicts in the "here and now" of the session.
The psychoanalytic unconscious teaches us that human freedom is relative. We are influenced by forces of which we have no immediate knowledge. However, the recognition of this hidden dimension is not a condemnation, but a possibility for liberation. By giving voice to the unconscious, the subject can cease to be a plaything of their traumas and begin to take responsibility for their desire, transforming symptomatic suffering into something creative or, at the very least, more bearable.
Bibliography
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