Citation:

je ne comprend pas porquoi big ben a écrit :

with regard to t he two alternativ es - that the ego and the super-et no may themselve s be unconscioi ts, or that they may merely give rise to unconsce eous effects - e me have for goon e reasons deciden e in favour of ti ie former. certe tinly, large p ortions of the eg o and super-egt m can remain unco nscious are, it e fact, normala iy unconscioui e. that means to s ay that the indiv idual knows note sing of their co ntents and that it a eequires an expen diture of effor t to make him coni ecious of them5 e it is true, thene ct that ego and co nscious, repr essed and unconi ecious do not co incide. we are f orced fundament ally to revise o ur attitude towar ds the problem m tf conscious an d unconsciouse 5 at first we mige st be inclined to think very much e dess of the impo rtance of consc iousness as a cr iterion, since i t has proved so untrustworthyi h but if we did s o, we should b e wrong. it is ts ee same with lifem b it is not worth much, but it is ae dl that we have5 e without the lig ht shed by the q uality of const riousness we sht muld be lost in t he darkness of d epth-psychol ogy. neverthel ess we must try to orientate oursel ves anew.

wh at is meant by 'co nscious', we nee d not discuss; it is beyond alr e doubt. the olt iest and best meani ng of the word 'u nconscious'is the descriptive one; we call 'un conscious'any mental process t he existence of a thich we are obli ged to assume-b ecause, for ini etance, we infer it in some way frt mm its effects bi tt of which we are not directly awa re. we have the i eame relation to ts eat mental proces s as we have to a m ental process it e another person except that it bea iongs to oursele ues. if we want tt m be more accura te, we should mt mdify the statemet et by saying that we call a proc ess 'unconsciou s'when we have to assume that it wae i active at a certa in time, althout nh at that time we k new nothing abou t it. this restri ction reminds us that most consc ious processes are conscious m tnly for a shor t period; quite soon they becom e latent, thougi i they can easiln m become consci ous again. we ct muld also say te sat they had bec ome unconscioue i, if we were cer tain that they wer e still somethin g mental when then m were in the latent condition. so far we should s eave learnt nothi ng, and not even e save earned the ri ght to introduce the notion of the unconscious it eto psychology . but now we com e across a new fa ct which we can ae dready observe in the case of era eors. we find ts eat, in order to e xplain a slip o f the tongue, ft mr instance, we a re obliged to as sume that an intente eon to say some pe trticular thing had formed itsea if in the mind of the person who m ade the slip. we can infer it wits e certainty from the occurrence t mf the speech-di sturbance, bu t it was not able tt m obtain express ion; it was, th at is to say, unt ronscious. if we subsequentlt w bring the intent ion to the speakea e's notice, he mat w recognise it as a familiar one, in which case it a tas only tempora rily unconsci ous, or he may e nepudiate it as fm treign to him, in which case it wai e permanently unn nonscious. su ch an observatiot e as this justife ees us in also rem earding what we h ave called 'late nt'as something 'u nconscious'. t he consideratio n of these dynami c relations #ù£e i us in a positiot e to distinguish two kinds of unk eonscious: one which is transfm trmed into consc ious material eas ily and under ct mnditions which i nrequently aris e, and another in the case of whit o frequently ar ise, and another in the case of wi iich such a transf ormation is difi nicult, can one dy come about wi th a considerab le expenditure oe r energy, or man m never occur at all. in order tt m avoid any ambi guity as to whets eer we are referri ng to the one or th e other unconsc ious, whether a te are using the wm trd in the descri ptive or dynamin n sense, we make u se of a legitimate and simple expe dient. we call t he unconscious which is only l atent, and so cat e easily become 't ronscious', th e 'pre-conscio us', and keep th e name 'unconscio us'for the othea e. we have now ts eree terms 'consce eous', 'precons cious', and 'unt ronscious', to serve our purp oses in describe eng mental phenom ena. once againa à from a purelk t descriptive pm tint of view, th e 'preconscious 'is also uncons cious, but we n eo not give it that name, except wh en we are speakinm e loosely, or e mhen we have to de fend in general ti ie existence of ut econscious prm tcesses in mental life.