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Freud profoundly altered the ways in which we understand ourselves when he demonstrated how things are not always what they seem. Through his treatises on dreams, on everyday slips of the tongue, on jokes, on art, on history and more, Freud taught us that though consciously we believe we are in control of how we act and what we think, unconscious motivations are continuously driving our actions and our thoughts. Others before Freud had spoken of what was nonconscious, but it was Freud's genius to describe what came to be known as the dynamic unconscious. Consciousness gives the illusion of control over one's thoughts and actions, but unconscious mentation is what actually drives the machinations of the mind. Man's instincts are only barely reined in by the pressures of civilization.
Freud believed that seething inner urges—instincts and drives—were constantly pressing to find expression and satisfaction in the worxsld. The conflict between these inner urges and the forces of civilization is what Freud thought lead to the development of the human mind. But the conflict could never be finally resolved, and the unconscious acts that Freud so carefully enumerated provided evidence of the conflicts universal to all mankind. Thus the life instincts (Eros) continuously battle death instincts (Thanatos); sex wars with aggression. And all these inner drives fight the sanctions imposed by civilization in order to gain expression.
The question of how these inner psychobiological strivings come to be transformed into the stuff of human psychology—otherwise known as the mind/body problem—fascinated Freud. How does mind emerge out of body? Philosophers have traditionally wrestled with the matter of the duality of the mind and body, and Freud threw his hat into this ring as well as he investigated and theorized about the formation of the psychic apparatus.