The Nature of Consciousness, Repression and De-Repression
In the foregoing chapter I have tried to outline the ideas of man and of human existence which underlie the goals of humanistic psychoanalysis. But psychoanalysis shares these general ideas with other humanistic philosophical or religious concepts. We must now proceed to describe the specific approach through which psychoanalysis tries to accomplish its goal.
The most characteristic element in the psychoanalytic approach is, without any doubt, its attempt to make the unconscious conscious-or, to put it in Freud's words, to transform Id into Ego. But while this formulation sounds simple and clear, it is by no means so. Questions immediately arise: What is the unconscious? What is consciousness? What is repression? How does the unconscious become conscious? And if this happens, what effect does it have?
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