Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/84

 76 COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

works, which bring together what has hitherto been known regard- ing the unconscious and which also acid new points of view and knowledge concerning its principles, Freud lias given the necess- ary explanations. He has shown what facts compel us to assume unconscious mental processes, what facts were necessary in order to assign to the unconscious its special characteristics recognised by analysis, and which other facts prohibit the ascribing to it traits and characteristics of a purely speculative nature. Freud in his Lectures (11, 13) and also in his articles (9) constantly and emphatically states that the a.ssuniption of the unconscious is necessary and legitimate, and that wc possess numerous proofs of its existence. He certainly does not fail to recognise the different ways of regarding the unconscious, which includes acts that are unconscious only for the time being, and processes that arc repressed; and he also shows how valuable the topographical point of view is for the distinction of the hierarchy of psychical acts. By means of psychical topography, which now supplements the dynamic conception of mental pro- cesses, it is possible to indicate in what systems or between what psychical systems the processes take place. The important question of the existence of unconscious feelings and formations of affect |

receives its answer, in that the distinction is emphasised between unconscious ideas that are really memory traces and affects which are really discharging processes. Topography and dynamics of repression, which take place in regard to ideas on the boundary between the preconscious and unconscious systems, receive further illumination through Freud's description of this process as a with- drawal of the libido and through the a.ssuniption of a "counter- charge" {Gegenbesetzung) for the protection of the preconscious system against the pressing forward of unconscious ideas. Besides the dynamic and topographical points of view there is also a third, the economic, which deals with the fate of the tiuantities of exitat- ion. The description of a mental process according to its dynamic, topographical and economic relations Freud terms a metapsycho- logical presentation. The characteristics of the processes belonging to the unconscious system arc lack of contradiction, primary pro- cess (mobility of the charges), absence of time, and substitution of external by psychical reality. Freud gives a picture of the com- munication of the two systems which cannot be easily described, and the development of derivatives of the unconscious. Freud's article on repression (10) furnishes important supplements to the