ABSTRACT
Autonomy is a form of personal liberty of action where the individual determines his or her own course of action in accordance with a plan chosen by himself or herself. The autonomous person is one who not only deliberates about and chooses such plans but who is capable of acting on the basis of such deliberations. . . . A person's autonomy is his or her independence, self-reliance, and self-contained ability to decide. A person of diminished autonomy, by contrast, is highly dependent on others and in at least some respect incapable of deliber ating or acting on the basis of such deliberations. . . . The most general idea of autonomy is that of being one’s own person, with out constraints either by another’s action or by a psychological or physical limitation. The term “ autonomy” is thus quite broad, for it can refer to both the will and action in society; and both internal and external constraints on action can limit autonomy. 1
[MJental processes are in themselves unconscious and . . . of all mental life it is only certain individual acts and portions that are conscious. [Psychoanalysis . . . cannot accept the identity of the conscious and the mental. It defines what is mental as processes, such as feeling, thinking, and willing, and it is obliged to maintain
that there is unconscious thinking and unapprehended will ing. . . . [T]he hypothesis of there being unconscious mental pro cesses paves the way to a decisive new orientation in the world of science.5
