AT THE HEART OF FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS - Making the Unconscious Consious

 AT THE HEART OF FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

is the endeavour to make the unconscious conscious. One can look at this task through other interpretive prisms as well, such as the Jungian concept of individuation, reminiscent of the Socratic dictum about getting to know ourselves, or the commendable endeavour of the ego psychologists to strengthen the ego, as well as the ability of our liberated soul, or psyche, to have good relationships with others, and importantly, to love.
But what did Freud really have in mind, we might perhaps wonder when we read James Strachey's "scientifically sounding" translations, in which he inter alia translates Freud's closing words of his New Introductory Lecture No. 31 as follows, "Where id was, there ego shall be."
That is not how Freud himself put it. His text actually reads, "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden." That literally means, "What used to be IT, shall become I." Which of course means that what is unconscious, shall become conscious." We have to discover important things about ourselves of which we weren't aware before our analysis. We have to unravel who we truly are. We have to uncover what makes us neurotic, and that is how we are healed.


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