Foreword

The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs. (Freud 1900, 213)

Our work should go forward on the basis not of our doubts, but of our discoveries … (Freud 1917, 273)

In 1920, the year of the first publication of the International Journal, Freud writes:

Psycho-Analysis does not stay at abstractly affirming the two theses so painful to Narcissism—the psychical significance of sexuality and the unconsciousness of mental life—but rather proves them by means of a material that touches every individual personally and forces him to face these problems. (Freud 1920, 23)

It is also in 1920 in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” that Freud explicitly names the death drive, which was to deal a further blow to “Narcissism.” The theme of the Centenary Conferences centred on the foundational features that make up the essence of psychoanalysis: the unconsciousness of mental life, sexuality, the death drive, trauma, and the body.

Shortly after his wish to have his ideas disseminated to English speakers was realised with the help of Ernest Jones, Freud writes:

The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life. (Freud 1923, 13)

In the twenty-first century, it is easy to pay lip service to the unconscious, yet still so much more difficult to maintain it as a focus in the consulting room and in the theoretical considerations that arise from clinical work. For the conferences in celebration of 100 years of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, which also marked the 80th anniversary of Freud’s death and the centenary of Freud’s paper “The Uncanny,” the overall theme was The Psychoanalytic Cor