The preconscious
The preconscious is a term defined by Sigmund Freud to denote a system of the psychic apparatus which, together with the two other systems ( the unconscious and the conscious ), represented his first topical model of the human psyche. Freud used the term to describe an area of the human psyche that, in the strict sense, cannot be equated with the unconscious system .
Unconscious content can only reach the preconscious if it can pass the strict censorship placed on the border . But this only happens through transformations and disguises of the unconscious psychic material. There is also censorship at the border between the conscious and the preconscious, but it is permeable.
Development of the term in the work of Sigmund Freud
Freud defined these three systems as part of his first topic . Here the preconscious is described as an area, the contents of which are not identical with those of the current field of consciousness, but which can be made accessible to the consciousness (and according to certain rules). In Freud's later writings, especially after Freud's second topic (where the three psychic instances ( id , ego and superego ) were defined) the term is mostly used in the adjectival sense. This means that preconsciously all those psychological processes, procedures, operations and contents are applied that “escape current consciousness and are essentially tied to the ego, to whose unconscious parts they belong, without being completely unconscious”.
The central meaning that Freud gave to the distinction between preconscious and unconscious is related to his definition of the unconscious, which was no longer defined as a mere absence of consciousness or "not conscious", as was common in his day, but as a system of mental functioning, which is subject to completely different laws.
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean Laplanche , and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis : Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse (1967). From the French by Emma Moersch: The vocabulary of psychoanalysis , Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1972, pp. 612ff, ISBN 3-518-27607-7
- ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco and Michel Plon: Dictionnaire de la Psychanalyse (1997). Translated from French by: Christoph Eissing-Christophersen et al.: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis Springer, Vienna 2004, pp. 1112f, ISBN 3-211-83748-5