ABSTRACT
In Studies on Hysteria (Freud and Breuer, 1895) and in subsequent works on the neuroses, Freud proved the relevance of unconscious mental life for explaining and for curing common neurotic disorders. But it was with the Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900) that he proceeded to show how the unconscious was the dominant aspect of all mental life, not just of its pathology. For this reason he considered this book his most important contribution to psychology. As he declared: ‘From the date of The Interpretation of Dreams psycho-analysis had a twofold significance. It was not only a new method of treating the neuroses but it was also a new psychology’ (Freud, 1924: 200). Freud’s study of depth psychology in his clinical practice led him to propose theoretical systems that could explain the functioning of the mind accounting for the unconscious as well as the conscious phenomena progressively unravelled by psychoanalysis. As he continued to revise his theories of mental functioning to make them consistent with new clinical findings, he came to realize that not only does the unconscious dominate mental life, but also that consciousness is better understood as an accidental property of psychic phenomena. In the introduction to The Ego and the Id , James Strachey, the eminent editor of the English Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud , explains how Freud (1923: 7) had reached the conclusion that
the criterion of consciousness was no longer helpful in building up a structural picture of the mind. Freud accordingly abandoned the use of consciousness in this capacity: ‘being conscious’ was henceforward to be regarded simply as a quality which might or might not be attached to a mental state.
