ABSTRACT
Before we can think about how the therapist might approach the clinical situation, we need to explore the nature of the human psyche’s depths. Freud’s original sense of the unconscious focused on its function as a storehouse for fundamental instincts of sex and aggression. It began as the id, a seething cauldron of biologically based urges that the person learns to repress. Analysis worked to explore the war between the rational individual, who wanted to be civilized and appropriate, and his unconscious, which wanted to pull him into a maelstrom of sexual and aggressive behavior. In this early model, the finite aspects of the unconscious were emphasized; it was a repository of repressed material that the analyst’s interpretations would exhume. The original optimistic goal of analysis imagined the possibility of emptying the unconscious by becoming fully aware of one’s instinctual urges. Conscious awareness was supposed to allow the person to sublimate unwanted passions into constructive channels. This very early understanding of the unconscious no longer reflects any depth therapist’s theories.
