Freud and Consciousness: X. The Place of Consciousness in Freud's Science

The purpose of the present article is to improve the general comprehension of Freud's conception of consciousness by focusing upon the place that Freud explicitly assigned to consciousness within his science. Of central concern are the conscious psychical processes, which occur in the perception–consciousness system, possess individually both qualitative and cognitive contents, and include conscious awareness each one of itself, along with whatever else each may be an awareness of The quality of being conscious, which every conscious psychical process possesses, is intrinsic to each conscious psychical process; nothing more than it itself needs to occur in order for the quality to be instantiated. Direct acquaintance with conscious psychical processes provides the analogical basis for positing unconscious psychical processes; these, in turn, help to explain the occurrence of psychical and behavioral happenings consciously accessible by sensory perception or inner awareness. Every unconscious psychical process is, so to speak, an instance of a “truncated” consciousness; that is, its owner undergoes therein nonqualitative and nonreflexive awareness of something or as though of

something. Although the quality of being conscious is not essential to the psychical, it is no less a property of natural processes than any other property a psychical process possesses.