FREUD'S THEORIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 363 



behind the scenes. Most things that we think we do from conscious 

 motives, most of the thoughts that come into our minds, are but the 

 surrogates and the s}Tnbols for the processes that go on beneath the 

 threshold. Ideas are so censored before they get admission to con- 

 sciousness that we have often little notion of their real nature, and can 

 only wonder that the apparently meaningless idea should haimt us so. 



If these conclusions are substantiated, we seem to have a new light 

 shed on the old question of the unconscious. It becomes for us the 

 most real part of ourselves; the expression of our deepest tendencies. 

 It is a realm far larger and far deeper than consciousness; it holds 

 secrets that we thought lost forever. The psychologist would explain 

 the unconscious from the nature of consciousness; Freud, on the other 

 hand, explains consciousness from the nature and function of the 

 unconscious. 



The assertion that much of our thinking is symbolic in its nature, 

 due to the fact that it serves as a sort of safety-valve for the escape of 

 our repressed complexes, is of course a problem which can never be 

 solved by appeal to consciousness alone. And it is so with most of the 

 other positions which Freud has taken; we are following pathways 

 where introspection is no guide. Thus he would have us shift the 

 emphasis in psychology from a study of consciousness over to a study 

 of the unconscious. Consciousness, for him, is but the surface; it is 

 in the depths below consciousnes that true reality is found. 



We may then sum up the contribution which Freud has made to the 

 psychology of the unconscious as follows: he has supposed that the 

 unconscious consists of two streams of tendencies, or energy, one stream 

 striving to revive all the time experiences which would be repugnant to 

 us, and which we have outgrown, and the other striving to check the 

 revival of such tendencies. As a result of this conflict, we have intro- 

 duced into our thoughts and acts, especially in conditions when barriers 

 are somewhat down (as in dreams, lapses, neuroses, reveries), a vast 

 deal of the symbolic and the indirect methods of presentation. 



Now is such activity as we have been considering mental in its 

 nature — are the unconscious associations and connections of which we 

 have been speaking really associations and thoughts that go on under- 

 neath the surface? Or are we dealing with a very complex degree of 

 nervous activity, and with that alone? Freud nowhere states his own 

 position definitely, though it is perhaps too easy to accuse him of lean- 

 ings toward the mental interpretation. What he has done is rather to 

 open up new lines of approach to the problem, to give us a consistent 

 and closely reasoned interpretation of observed facts. Psychologists 

 are beginning to recognize that, right or wrong, he must be reckoned 

 with. He has given a stimulus to work along this line that may go a 

 long way toward the ultimate solution of some of our baffling psycho- 

 logical problems. 



