The unconscious as a knowledge processing centre

Psychoanalysis from its inception has focused on the connections between unconscious knowledge and conscious awareness. With regard to the theme of knowing and not knowing, we need to be reminded that this subject was implicit in Freud&s;s initial understanding of symptom formation in the hysteric patient. The hysteric patient&s;s defences against unwanted thoughts and feelings are never completely successful; that which is repressed only returns in another form. The idea of the unconscious as the area of the mind in which knowledge is processed is explicit in Freud&s;s explanation of the formation of dreams as he outlined in The Interpretation of Dreams . Unconscious knowledge may be negated by repression and denial but unconscious knowledge may also be unavailable to consciousness because of an inability to select what is of value to the self. As psychoanalysts they are clinically acquainted with the phenomenon of self, but the importance of self feeling has not been sufficiently recognized by academic psychologists or philosophers.