20. Развитие идеи бессознательного в психоанализе Э. Джозеф (Evolving Concepts of the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis. Edward D. Joseph)

20. Evolving Concepts of the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis. Edward D. Joseph

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA

It is an honor and a privilege for me, as a psychoanalyst, to participate in a Symposium on The Unconscious, since the concept of the unconscious is basic to the development and evolution of modern psychoanalysis. The idea that mental activity included more than an individual was consciously aware of is not new in either literature or science (cf. Ellenberger). Writers, poets and philosophers had all previous to the time of Freud described aspects of mental activity occurring outside of consciousness and influencing conscious decisions and behaviors. However, in modern terms, it is to Freud that we owe the concept of The Unconscious, or as I would prefer to describe it, of unconscious mental activity, which not only is an integral part of mental functioning, but more particularly has its own rules, laws and modes of operating that differ from conscious mental activity. It is also to Freud that we owe the attempt to understand the nature of unconscious mental activity as a scientific discipline subject to investigation and understanding, so that it can take its rightful place as an integral component determining human behavior, thinking and feeling. As is true of any scientific undertaking, Freud's original concepts and the whole field of psychoanalysis have undergone considerable modification and expansion over the decades since he first began his work.

It is the purpose of my presentation, and I hope a contribution to the Symposium, to describe some of the modifications and amplifications that have evolved out of investigation of Freud's original work in an effort to show that like any science, the science of psychoanalysis has not been static, but rather one that has continued to develop, grow and evolve as a result of continuing investigative work. Thus at the present time, while modern psychoanalysis is derived from Freud's original investigations of "the unconscious", the nature of the understanding of unconscious mental activities is far greater and far more encompassing, enabling greater understanding of the psychological nature of human behavior offering the possibility of a general theory of psychology rather than only a psychological theory of mental illness, important as that latter may be.

In the comments that I will make in the course of this presentation, I will be presenting much that is called theory without presenting the data from which this theory is derived. It is perhaps to the discredit of psychoanalysis that so often the publications and statements made by psychoanalysts assume that the reader or audience has a clinical background of experience, so as to understand the type of data used to derive the various statements made. While it is true that oftentimes statements are speculative or represent hypotheses, Freud and most of his followers have based their hypotheses and theories upon clinical observations using those observations as the data base from which they derive the hypotheses or theories. If the data base is not understood, or it is not given, it is difficult therefore for someone not familiar with the method of collection of such data or the nature of such data to follow the comments being made. For example, Freud's inference of the existence of unconscious mental activity was a necessary inference derived from clinical observations and attaining ot data that could not otherwise be explained. When the explanatory inference of unconscious mental activity was made, then much of this data could be understood in a way that had not been possible before. This inference had tremendous implications in shedding light on the nature of psychopathological processes and psychopathological productions from patients, as well as illuminating more normal phenomena such as dreams, the dream process, slips of tongue and other ordinary parapraxis of everyday life, the productions of mythology, folklore and adding an understanding and additional dimension to literature and art.

The experimental method that Freud used and the laboratory in which he worked were combined to produce a new set of data that had not been available or heard and understood before. His laboratory was the clinical situation and his experimental method was based upon that of free association. This was a method arrived at through a system of trial and error, derived in part from earlier work on hysteria and hypnosis and the chance observations, in association with Breuer, that patients often had recollections, thoughts and feelings, available to them in hypnoid states, but not otherwise to their conscious thinking. He sought a method of obtaining access to these mental contents without the artificial intervention of hypnosis or hypnotic suggestion which served as a possible contaminant of the data being obtained. In attempting to remove the factor of suggestibility, he encouraged his patients to express whatever comes to mind, emphasizing the "whatever" and asking for an abolition of the screening process that allows expression only to approved types of thoughts and feelings. The method of free association as utilized allowed for the emergence of many ideas, memories, feelings, dreams and even slips of speech and tongue that had not previously been available in the clinical situation. The method of free association continues to be used both as a clinical therapeutic and a scientific investigative tool. In effect, the method of free association provided Freud with the data of introspection by the patient, which when put together with the inference of unconscious mental activity, allowed for the extension of the products of introspection into greater and greater depths of the mind. The inferences that could be made using the products of introspection and the concept of unconscious mental activity could be verified by further products of introspection produced by the patient.

Thus the free association method has a built-in system of verification of inferences and a method of proving or disproving inferences that were made.

Given the concept ol unconscious mental activity as lending an added dimension to the understanding of introspective approaches, what Freud proceeded to explore, explicate and write about were the phenomena of mental activity at an unconscious level as being not only more complex than conscious mental activity, but actually differing in quality as well as complexity. He showed that unconscious mental activity was not more of the same, as conscious mental activity, but was, in fact, markedly different than conscious mental activity. The early years of his work, therefore, was exploring the nature of this unconscious, more complex and qualitatively different area of the mind* In effect, he went beyond the common sense explanations of his time and to some extent of our own time.

Out of this scientific exploration came a whole range of findings, postulates and theories that were natural consequences of the basic inference with which he started. Thus he found that not only were there qualitatively different methods and modes of operating at levels outside of consciousness, he also found that there was a timeless quality to the mental products existing at an unconscious level and that many of these mental products were derived from much earlier periods of life extending into early childhood. He found it possible to trace and to recapture, or reconstruct, events of early years and show their impact and influence on forms of behavior and on the later production of neurotic or psychotic manifestations. He thus was led to another of the fundamental concepts that underlie psychoanalytic theory and practice today - namely, that of a developmental sequence in which successive stages of development evolve out of preexisting stages following both an experiential and biological maturational line. I shall hope to touch later in this presentation on some of the vast areas of research that have evolved out of this developmental concept.

Because it soon became evident that the concept of unconscious mental activity had uncovered an area of mental functioning that was qualitatively and quantitatively different than that of conscious mental functioning, Freud abandoned his first concept of mental activity-that essentially of a stimulus-response neuronal model and developed the concept of a mental apparatus composed of at least 2 portions qualitatively different from each other-a conscious-and an unconscious portion of the mind. He then had to account for a series of phenomena that might be typified by stating that there are 2 forms of unconsciousness. These phenomena could be typified by my asking a member of the audience listening to me a question as to when his birthday is. He could immediately supply me with the appropriate date, yet the moment before I ask the question, that date was not in his awareness and usually a moment or so after, it would be gone from his conscious stream of thought. Yet it was immediately available to him even though existing outside of consciousness. On the other hand, there is mental content that can be elicited through the process of analysis that is not ordinarily or easily available to the conscious mind. Therefore, Freud differentiated 2 levels of unconsciousness, calling one the preconscious and the other the unconscious. The preconscious contains mental contents which have ready accessibility to consciousness, in contrast to other mental contents that do not have ready availability to consciousness, but can, with great effort, ultimately be made conscious. Thus Freud provided a model of the mind functioning at 3 levels - the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. Because of the fact that mental contents in the unconscious portion of the mind cannot easily be made conscious, he felt that some sort of barrier or censorship must be postulated as existing between unconscious and preconscious-conscious. For many years in his work the nature of that barrier was not studied, (although some of his earliest papers dealt with this issue) but rather every effort was made to break it down as though it was an impediment simply to be stormed through in order to get at unconscious mental content. In so doing he was able to describe the qualitative differences between conscious and unconscious mental functioning. Essentially these qualitative differences can be summed up as representing not only the timelessness mentioned before, the lack of contradictions between existing content, the use of condensation of mental elements, the easy displaceability from one element to another and a high degree of symbolism which manifested, among other things, another aspect of the displaceability discovered.

Still another finding emerged from his exploratory work, namely that much of the mental content that existed at an unconscious level could not be brought into consciousness partly because there were contradictory mental contents existing and struggling equally for expression. He found that many of the more conscious expressions of behavior represented compromises of opposing contradictory thoughts, feelings, or wishes, so that he found it possible to postulate not only the existence of conflictual mental content, but also a principle that seemed to govern its expression or non-expression. He called this a basic principle of mental functioning and it is based upon the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of unpleasure.

The nature of pleasure was difficult to define, but the nature of unpleasure was more easily defined, since frequently it emerged in manifestations of anxiety, remorse or other uncomfortable psychological feelings. Oftentimes he found also that the nature of conflictual mental products dealt with basic biological aspects of the human organism, namely sexual, and later he discovered aggressive impulses that ran the risk of involving the organism in unpleasur-able situations or feelings. Many times also he discovered in the course of his scientific explorations that the sexual or aggressive mental contents were derived not from just present-day experiences, but rather owe their origins and their strengths to earlier periods of life, often infantile, that had lain dormant for years only to be revived by the later life experiences.

Of even greater importance to mental functioning was his discovery that the daydreams or fantasies that exist at all times of life can have a greater impact upon development and conflict than even external reality provided. In other words, he discovered the phenomenon that the psychic reality I of fantasies or wishes can be as important, or more important than external reality. In fact, fantasies and wishes may be the exact opposite and not in accord with external reality. Yet these unconscious fantasies and wishes can exert tremendous influence through their involvement in conflict and their impact upon developing and evolving mental functions. In fact, the fantasies which have such psychic reality can be the cause of conflict between actions or desires of the organism and restraining forces that depend upon an awareness of reality or the action of moral judgements. A further discovery made in the course of the explorations of unconscious mental activity was that many of these fantasies or wishes were derived not from present-day period of time, but rather from the past periods in the life of the organism. In the investigations made, it seemed that oftentimes the most potent fantasies, which had the greatest psychic reality, were derived from a period of time early in the individual's life up to age 5 or 6. Not that there were not fantasies, experiences and other mental contents existing unconsciously which came from later periods of life, but rather it seemed as though this content from later periods of life were revisions and later additions of earlier models of psychic reality.

Out of this discovery has grown one of the most fruitful areas of investigation that has carried on right up until the present time with great vigor. This is essentially the investigation either through psychoanalytic methods or direct observation of the developmental stages in the growth of the human mental apparatus. While most of the early work had been derived trom psychoanalyses of adults, in the past 50 years there has been an increasing number of studies that have observed infants and children either at a cross-sectional level at various chronologic ages or have followed the development of individual children or groups of children longitudinally over a long period of time. Out of this has come an awareness of the gradual unfolding of the human potential of human development as modified and altered by experiential factors coming from outside the organism. A large series of investigations undertaken by psychoanalysts, or by others who have accepted the developmental point of view, have produced a wealth of observation and a great deal of theory formation as to the nature of early mental life and its gradual unfolding. Surprisingly, there is a great deal of general agreement between various investigators; not unsurprisingly there is also considerable disagreement as to details of the methods of unfolding of human mental activity. But all agree that one of the contributions of the psychoanalytic investigation of unconscious mental functions has been the discovery and investigation along developmental lines that have thrown greater and greater light on the change from a neurophysiologic apparatus at birth to the human adult with all of its mental capacities. The important contribution has been to extend the detailed investigations of the stages of the life cycle from birth onward to death. By and large, psychoanalysts and other students of human development have tended to concentrate more on the first periods of life, while the later decades of life have not as yet been as well studied.

Another phenomenon observed in the experimental situations produced by free associations was the fact that many of the mental products being expressed seemed to have a degree of force or energy attached to them. This was particularly true of affects or emotions that were expressed, but even the ideas seemed to have a certain charge or push behind them. In view of the fact that various mental contents could be in conflict with each other or in conflict with representations of the outside world, it was felt necessary to infer or to postulate some kind of energy involved in ali mental activity. This energy seemed to be associated with both the sexual and aggressive components of the mental contents. Accordingly, it was pos-t ulated that these energies arose from basically instinctual sources originating within the body of the organism and translated into equivalent psychic forms. The nature of the psychic energy could only be inferred and postulated since it has never been measured or quantified other than in such terms as "a great deal" or "a very little". These global quantifications have been inadequate, but to date are the only measure of the strength of these mental energies.

As to the nature of the mental energies, beyond saying that they are derived from bodily sources, there have been various hypotheses about their form and their various vicissitudes. Freud used the models of physics current in his time, so that his postulates about their nature follow the model of a hydraulic system of" energic distribution and vicissitudes. Thus he could speak of the damming up of energy or the diversion of energy, etc. Various other models of the nature and form ol such energies have been proposed, but none has proven wholly satisfactory or been adopted in place of the original postulates Freud made. There are those, accordingly, who would omit any consideration of psychic energies from discussions of the nature of mental processes. The riposte to this is, that whatever their nature may be, there seems to be no doubt to the outside observer that much of his data is explicable in terms of quantities of energy that provide impetus and degrees of force to mental contents. By and large, therefore, the concept of psychic energies operating at unconscious levels has remained part of psychoanalytic theory even though there may be disagreement about the nature of such forces.

For many years, most exploration of unconscious mental activities tended to concentrate on the nature of the content and modes of operation of what was unconscious. The division of a mental apparatus into 3 levels - conscious, preconscious and unconscious - reflected this, with most studies focused on the latter portion of the mental apparatus. It was recognized from the beginning that there wTere additional mental activities that were variously called ego instincts, self preservative drives, etc. As was mentioned above, it was also known very early that there seemed to be a barrier between the unconscious area of the mind and the other 2 postulated regions. It was considered that the nature of the barrier between unconscious and the other 2 systems operated from the direction of the conscious-preconscious systems, but gradual investigation demonstrated that much of the barrier was in itself unconscious in nature. Such a phenomenon was not in keeping with theory, thus it obviously was necessary to change the theory, not the phenomenon once it had been verified. Other phenomena were also contradictory to the theory, leading to an extensive revision of the earlier models that had been developed.

The new revision has proven extremely productive of further research and investigative possibilities. Essentially, the model of the mental apparatus was considered in terms of its functions. It was recognized that a central function of a cluster of mental activities could be described as mediating between the needs and wishes of the organism, in its relationship to the outside world as modified by its perception of that outside world and its awareness of certain moral and ethical components. Using this central mediating function as a focus, mental activities such as the relationship to reality (the outside), perception, memory, the relationship to objects (both people and things), the thinking processes and the affective processes, and certain integrative or synthetic capacities could all be grouped together as a cluster of mental activities that serve to relate the organism to the outside world and to attempt to achieve a balance between the needs of the organism and the pleasure-unpleasure principle that seemed to govern human mental activity. This cluster of functions was arbitrarily given the name of Ego, while the region of the mind whose function seems to contain the wishes and drives of the organism was called impersonally the Id, and the moral and ethical demands, since they seem to have a somewhat independent relationship to the ego functions, were assigned the name of Super Ego. There were many other functions that seemed to belong in the ordering of ego activities - namely, language, symbolism (those mental activities most characteristic of the human organism) and a cluster of activities that could be inferred by their end products, namely, defensive activities.

In this different way of looking at mental activities, the distinction between conscious and unconscious was no longer the basic phenomenon upon which the model of the mental apparatus was divided. Rather in this new way, it could be seen that many of the ego's activities, for example, could be either sonscio.us orjunconscious in nature. Thus the relationship to consciousness was reduced from the fundamental characteristic of the hypothesized form of the mental apparatus to a quality that might be possessed by one or other of the mental activities. To use thinking as an example, it may have a conscious quality at one time and a largely unconscious quality at other times. The same principle would apply to the mental function of memory which could be conscious, completely unconscious, or have qualities of both at varying times. Thus the relationship to consciousness ceased to be the principal criterion mpon which a model of mental activity was based. On the other hand, in this new view the Id was a completely unconscious region of the mind with its wishes, needs, energies, etc. being completely unconscious and unavailable, acquiring consciousness only through the activity of various ego functions seeking to carry out a mediating role between the id-need and what was possible in terms of reality and in terms of superego activity. The superego was viewed as having both its conscious and unconscious portions, with the conscious portion being roughly analogous to what is commonly called conscience, but other portions of superego functions being unconscious and observable by virtue of modifications in conscious thoughts, feelings or behavior.

Following this revision of psychoanalytic theory, a revision now commonly referred to as the structural theory, much attention, investigation and research has evolved allowing for greater understanding of the nature of each of the various functions subsumed under the heading of ego activities, and opening the way for greater understanding of the nature of the mind as well as greater application of psychoanalytic understanding to a wider and wider variety of clinical disorders.

Combining this new view of mental activity with the inferences of unconscious activity and of developmental sequences, it has been possible to trace out in greater detail and with greater clarity the development and modification of each ego function from birth onward. What always has to be borne in mind is that each of these functions interacts and interdigitates with every other function at any given moment. Thus statements that might, for example, be made about the development of the function of reality leading to the activity of reality testing and the development of a sense of reality carry with them that this development occurs in combination and interaction with perception, memory, relationship to cutside objects, levels of development of the thinking processes, etc These concepts imply a very dynamic interaction between all levels of the mind at all times. Most of this interaction occurs at unconscious levels so that the individual is not aware of their occurring nor is the outside observer. The outside observer can infer the unconscious interactions and does infer them in order to provide explanatory hypotheses.

At the same time, this new theoretical model widened the area in which intrapsychic conflict can occur, since conflict can be conceived as being more than between a wish of the organism and the outside world, but rather can now be visualized as being between portions of the mind which operate at intrapsychic levels to attempt to carry out a mediating function interacting with the relationship with objects (people) or the state of the reality world or the nature of the superego moral awarenesses^ These latter three furctions can, for that matter, be in conflict with each other as well as with needs arising from the hypothesized Id.

Furthermore, since each of these ego functions seems to have its own developmental pattern, it has been possible to trace out normal lines of development of the various functions in a longitudinal profile as well as to see their interactions with each other at cross-sectional moments. It has also opened the way to the discovery of individuals who have failures of development of one or another function without all functions being interfered with. It was also possible to see individuals in whom defensive processes such as regression, can involve one or two ego functions rather than the totality of ego functions. Fcr example, the sense of reality and of reality testing can be interfered with in certain conflictual situations, so that there may either be a failure to develop a sense of reality or a capacity of reality testing or there may be a regression of such functions. In the psychotic the sense of reality may have failed to develop (i. e. infantile autism) or may be regressively interfered with leading to a return to an earlier level of reality testing (i. e. schizophrenia). In lesser disorders the sense of reality may only be impaired to a slight degree, so that in a neurotic illness (i. e. phobias ) the sense of reality is unimpaired in all situations except those for which the individual is phobic. There the sense of reality is invaded by conflict, symbolism and various defenses so that the individual's sense of reality fails in that specific phobic situation, but not in other realities.

Looked at in this way, it is possible to say that mental functions such as memory and perception are basic to the operation of all other mental functions. Memory and perception have, of course, a neurophysiologic basis as a matrix out of which the mental activity develops and operates. But given this neurophysiologic matrix, it is then possible to study the development of memories as a mental activity and to show an evolving structure of memories and memory formations as well as the invasion of the mental function of memory by conflict, so that in some situations there is either regression or failure of development of memory functioning occurring. Not all memories or memorial activities are so invaded, butjoften only specific ones that are closely related to the nature of the conflicts involved.

Studies of the development of ego functions have traced out in detail the great importance of the relationship to objects (people) as an important and vital fact of human development. The basic biological dependence of the human organism at birth, makes it necessary for the organism's very physical survival to depend for a long period of time upon an outside object or objects. At the same time as the biological dependence for survival occurs, mental activities such as memories and perceptions develop as well as experiences giving rise to satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and developing emotions and feelings concerning such objects. Mental representations of external objects are gradually acquiring along with differentiation between the object and the self. These are processes that occur unconsciously at early periods of life, but lead eventually to an internalized image of an outside object or person along with images of the nature of the world around. That these internalized images may not be accurate representations of the exact nature of either the self, the object or the outside world is determined by the fact of their having a variety of feelings, experiential memories, wishes and fantasies attached to such internalized images. Thus their inner representations are not a one to one replication of reality . It has been found that, derived from both experimental and clinical evidence, it is possible to describe the relationship with objects as developing through a series of regarding the object only in terms of its ability to satisfy the needs of the organism through several stages in which the object is internally represented as completely independent with its own needs, wishes and modes of gratification and a desire to provide those where the relationship is predominantly a loving one. If the relationship between organism and object is predominantly a hostile one, there may be a desire to disappoint the object from achieving its own needs and wishes and gratifications. Using such a developmental model, for example, it has been possible to understand much human pathology in terms of disturbances of the ego functions of relationship to objects. For example, the schizophrenic tends to see the object only in regressed terms of its need-gratifying possibilities, if the object is perceived and registered at all. One of the characteristics of advanced schizophrenia is a complete unawereness of the existence of objects, other than the self, in the schizophrenic's internal world.

Each of the various functions mentioned above could be described in terms of its own individual development so that there are developmental levels of all functions. The same would seem to be true of the development of the superego functions. The clinical application of these findings is that a variety of disorders can be understood as representing either failure of development, or defects in the development, of different ego or superego functions, sometimes seen in terms of one function, but more often of several. In this way, a therapeutic approach is more possible to a range of disorders which involve not symptoms in the usual classical sense, but rather character phenomena relating to the totality of a personality. These latter are disorders that occur in terms of the relation of the individual to the people or the society about him, but do not cause him, himself, any particular distress. Still another range of disorders that came within therapeutic purview concerns individuals in whom there have been failures of development of one or another, or combination, of ego functions, so that they mature with various defects in their ego structures.

Along with these studies have gone other investigations of later stages of development, so that the period of adolescence has come under intense scrutiny and greater understanding. Whereas it had formerly been thought that the adolescent period was merely a recapitulation of the childhood period, it is now well known that adolescence, not only because of the biological changes, is a distinct stage and phase of its own with its own vicissitudes, crises and developmental problems, that may be influenced by previous childhood stages of development but also have a life and form of their own. Similarly, there are normal developmental crises of later stages of life in the various decades, so that it is now possible to conceive of the human organism as being in dynamic interplay with various developmental problems and crises as long as there is life.

The range of investigation of unconscious mental activities since the advent of the structural theory, has ranged from intense exploration of the nature of unconscious Id activities, to studies of the nature of superego activities and to investigations of the range of ego activities. For the final portion of this paper, I will speak of one development in the latter area which seems to hold promise for future understanding of how humans function and possibly in its clinical application. Psychoanalysis as spoken of so far has essentially been considered in relation to intrapsychic conflict and the various vicissitudes and impacts that this has had on development and on clinical manifestation. I have not discussed particularly the explorations of defense mechanisms or defensive maneuvers which shape and form individual character and the range of human neuroses. However, it has always been recognized by investigators in the field that there are many mental activities that are not involved in oconflict at given times in an individual's life and that for most people, much oof their mental life goes on outside of conflict.

Awareness of these phenomena has led in recent years to studies of those mental functions that are not involved in conflict such as, for example, creative processes cr work activities. It is recognized that many of these activities, of which there are many more than those just named, enable the human organism to adapt to his environment. In fact it is possible to view human development as a process of adapting to the environment in which the organism finds itself. The adaptiveness of the human, however, is not a passive alteration of the nature of mental activities to conform with his environment but may, and often does, include the capacity to alter the environment so that it conforms better to the needs of the ogranism. As a consequence, it is possible to view much of human mental development and activity from an adaptive point of view, bearing in mind that it can be an active process of change of the environment as well as change in the interactions within the objects in the environment, or modifications of those objects or the environment. It is not, again, merely a passive molding of one's needs in conformity with the environment.

As a further consequence including this range of activities within the scope of psychoanalytic investigation, many aspects of human psychology that exist outside of intrapsychic conflict can begin to be understood as to their role, function and development. Obviously, many of the adaptive processes also occur at an unconscious level and follow the same laws [of unconscious mental functioning that influence functions involved in intrapsychic conflict. Awareness, however, of the adaptive capacities of the individual shows that the human being is an extremely plastic organism able to mold itself or to mold its environment to its needs, so that there is a constant possibility of a change both for the specific individual as well as for the species. Studies of the adaptive capacities of individuals are really in their infancy, but offer great promise for the future.

Thus to sum up the thrust of this more or less historical survey of the development of psychoanalysis, I would say that the basic premise has been the existence of unconscious mental activities and an attempt to study and determine their nature. Earlier in the development of the field, unconscious mental, activity was seen in terms of intrapsychic conflict, wishes, defenses, shifts of energy, etc, with the realization that unconscious fantasy plays a great role. As the field has evolved, the range of unconscious mental activities that were studied, and could be studied, became those that are observed at a conscious level by classical psychology. Thus the scope of mental phenemena ordinarily studied by psychology could be further understood in terms of the unconscious components attached to the more consciously describable processes, so that mental functions such as memory, perception, thinking, effect could all be understood in terms of the unconscious as well as conscious proportion of such mental activity. Finally, the more unconscious processes of adaptation that round out and complete the totality of the personality have begun to come under scrutiny again in terms of the unconscious depth as well as the conscious surface manifestations.

Any area in psychoanalysis studied in detail shows the developmental process that] is true of any expanding scinece. The findings and concepts of earlier years have constantly been modified, expanded and extremely altered as new findings and new hypotheses have been generated. There have, at times, as is true of any science, been hypotheses that are advanced and eventually discarded as the weight of evidence indicates, so that the psychoanalytic literature is strewn with hypotheses that seem feasible at one time, but do not bear up under closer scrutiny. The main trends have, however, remained constant and one of the most important of these has been the basic concept'of unconscious mental activity.

References

(This covers only the American literature and does not inciude the European. Latin American or Far Eastern psychoanalytic literature. It is not exhaustive, but only representative of important publications).

1. Blos, P. (1971) Adolescence. Basic Books, New York.

2. Ellenberger, H. (1970) The Discovery of the Unconscious. Basic Books, New York.

3. Erikson, E. (1960) Childhood and Society. Morton and Co., New York.

4. Freud, A. (1936) Ego and Mechanisms of Defense. Int. Univ. Press, New York. 1964.

5. Freud, S. (1890-1939) Collected Works. Standard Edition. Vol. 1-24. Hogarth Press, London (1955-1975).

6. Hartmann, H. (1939) Ego Adaptation. Int. Univ. Press (1969).

7. Mahler, M. (1968 and 1975) On Human Symbiosis - Vol. I and II, Int. Univ. Press, New York.

8. Rapaport, D. (1968) Organization and Pathology of Thought, York Univ. Press, New Haven.

9. Schur, M. (1973) The Id and the Regulatory Principles, Harcourt, Brace, New York

10. Spitz, R. (1965) The First Year of Life, Int. Univ. Press, New York.