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Psychoanalytic theory does not currently possess an explicit conceptual model of what insight is, or a detailed causal explanation of how insight is acquired by patients and utilized in the process of mastering unconscious conflict. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Freud's thinking about the role conscious self-understanding plays in producing alterations of neurotic behaviour during the course of psychoanalytic therapy. Several profitable points of departure for a clinically useful theory of insight (to be presented in a subsequent paper) can be found in the evolution of Freud's early ideas about the nature, function and significance of consciousness in the regulation of intrapsychic processes.
It is generally recognized that people often do change their behaviour without the benefit of conscious insight and that a number of factors may prevent the occurrence of significant behavioural change following the attainment of insight (Kris, 1956). (The acquiring of insight is, of course, a change in itself with respect to a person's previous understanding of himself.) Despite the lack of an explicit theory of insight, psychoanalysis as an interpretive form of therapy rests on the assumption that a causal relationship exists between self-understanding and one's capacity to alter neurotic behaviour (Gill, 1963). The belief in the importance of insight in altering neurotic behaviour is closely related to the central role Freud assigned to consciousness in promoting advances in psychic functioning. Psychoanalysis does not, however, have a theory that adequately explains how consciousness achieves its desirable effects, although Freud struggled with this issue intermittently throughout his career.
For purposes of this paper, insight will be treated as a correct inference about the causal determinants of behaviour, one's own or that of another. Insight, in this context, is an accurate conceptual model which goes beyond the immediate contents of awareness