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A reply to Kretschmer's article under the same name appearing in the same journal (Bd. 46, S. 368).
The unconscious is not merely a name which can be replaced at will by 'non-conscious', itself incidentally a false one. Neither is the whole doctrine of the unconscious a working hypothesis or a theory; on the contrary, the unconscious is a well-founded, clearly-defined concept. It is impossible to regard the unconscious as outside the psyche, for it possesses all the psychical functions and together with consciousness forms a unified whole.
Kretschmer has proposed the term 'voluntary strengthening of the reflex', and explains repression as only a special case of this. Apart altogether from the circumstance that this term in no way expresses the unconscious, it is at best applicable only to the most elementary forms of war-hysterias; it cannot be extended to more complicated unconscious mechanisms, and is entirely unadapted to intra-psychical symptoms. The concepts of 'short-circuiting' and of automatism are equally unfitted for general application; moreover, the process which it is thus intended to describe is by no means the essential one in repression.
Examples are adduced to show that the unconscious does actually exist and that Kretschmer's own examples are not sufficiently explained by the assumption of a 'strengthening of the reflex'. It is merely one mechanism among many.
Unconscious mechanisms must be taken into account in normal persons as well as in the whole of psychopathology. In the delimitation of the term 'illness' the unconscious therefore has no part.
By non-recognition of the unconscious, however, a serious injustice may be done to the patient, since his attitude to health and illness will then be accounted to his consciousness, so that the estimate of his moral standards is completely falsified.