Unconscious Functions of Education1

It is good scientific practice to open a symposium with a simple definition of terms. Unfortunately in the case of education there can be no such definition. It is bound to vary in accordance with the psychological views of the symposiast. For example, the definitions accepted by most academic bodies are partly descriptive and partly psychological. But the psychology concerned is a conscious, almost academic, psychology. When psycho-analysts come to consider the problem of education these definitions are quite inadequate. Before defining the term they must subject it to a process of decomposition (in other words, analyse it): and in the last resort they must be ready to interpret it. They must interpret the various components of the process, and on the basis of these interpretations attempt to characterize the total activity.

This is only another way of saying that while psycho-analysis is entitled to take over the term 'education' (indeed must recognize it as a form of mental mechanism) it is bound to attach a deeper significance to it. This deepening process is amply illustrated throughout the history of psycho-analytic terminology. Take the case of 'repression'. Originally borrowed from common language, because of its conscious (topographic and dynamic) implications, the word was given a scientific twist by means of which it could be used to represent an unconscious mental mechanism. The same is true of terms such as 'projection', 'displacement', etc. But in all these instances analysts and, although to a lesser extent, non-analysts are aware of the special usage. In the case of 'education' even psycho-analysts are not fully aware that the term although applicable to a conscious volitional process is also a ready-made label for an unconscious mental mechanism, or, as the case may be, a combination of unconscious mental mechanisms. Confusion must inevitably arise from this special usage, just as it arose in the case of the term 'sublimation'. But th