Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/299

 But this is not the place to consider the many speculative theories nor the endless philosophical discussions concerning the nature and quality of the unconscious. We must be satisfied with the definition already given, which will prove quite sufficient for our purpose, namely the conception of the unconscious as the sum of all psychical processes below the threshold of consciousness.

The question of the importance of the unconscious for psychopathology may be briefly put as follows: “In what manner may we expect to find unconscious psychic material behave in cases of psychosis and neurosis?”

In order to get a better grasp of the situation in connexion with mental disorders, we may profitably consider first how unconscious psychic material behaves in the case of normal people, especially trying to visualize what in normal men is apt to be unconscious. As a preliminary to this knowledge we must get a complete understanding of what is contained in the conscious mind; and then, by a process of elimination we may expect to find what is contained in the unconscious, for obviously—per exclusionem—what is in the conscious cannot be unconscious. For this purpose we examine all activities, interests, passions, cares, and joys, which are conscious to the individual. All that we are thus able to discover becomes, ipso facto, of no further moment as a content of the unconscious, and we may then expect to find only those things contained in the unconscious which we have not found in the conscious mind.

Let us take a concrete example: A merchant, who is happily married, father of two children, thorough and painstaking in his business affairs, and at the same time trying in a reasonable degree to improve his position in the world, carries himself with self-respect, is enlightened in religious matters, and even belongs to a society for the discussion of liberal ideas.

What can we reasonably consider to be the content of the unconscious in the case of such an individual?

Considered from the above theoretical standpoint, everything in the personality that is not contained in the conscious