You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The history of the concept id, which is, at least in part, intimately connected with the history of other structural concepts, has been discussed extensively by Strachey (1961), Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein (1946), Beres (1962), and quite recently by Gill (1963). Therefore, I shall deal with it only briefly.
Until the early '20s, Freud's scientific interest, diverse as it was, centered on the uncovering of “the unconscious.” Throughout his life he considered his most crucial discovery to have been the realization that most of what is “mental” is unconscious. Freud's conceptualization of the unconscious, which he always considered the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory, resulted from observations of varied manifestations of normal and abnormal functioning, such as parapraxes, dreams, and neurotic symptoms. He arrived gradually at a distinction between the preconscious and the hardly accessible core of the unconscious—the “dynamic unconscious” (see Strachey, 1961; Gill, 1963)—which can become conscious only after the overcoming of resistances.
The discovery of the “unconscious” was only the first step, however. Freud had to find avenues to an understanding of the unconscious. He had to discern that there was “method in its madness,” to find the way it operated. Freud described this mode of operation as the “primary process.” He had to assume that this operation had energies at its disposal for its