Psychoanalysis and the unconsciousLawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Philosophy
Psychoanalysis and the unconscious
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Psychoanalysis
With dilated hearts we watched Freud disappearing into the cavern of
darkness, which is sleep and unconsciousness to us, darkness which
issues in the foam of all our day’s consciousness. He was making for the
origins. We watched his ideal candle flutter and go small. Then we
waited, as men do wait, always expecting the wonder of wonders. He came
back with dreams to sell.
But sweet heaven, what merchandise! What dreams, dear heart! What was
there in the cave? Alas that we ever looked! Nothing but a huge slimy
serpent of sex, and heaps of excrement, and a myriad repulsive little
horrors spawned between sex and excrement.
Is it true? Does the great unknown of sleep contain nothing else? No
lovely spirits in the anterior regions of our being? None! Imagine the
unspeakable horror of the _repressions_ Freud brought home to us.
Gagged, bound, maniacal repressions, sexual complexes, fæcal
inhibitions, dream-monsters. We tried to repudiate them. But no, they
were there, demonstrable. These were the horrid things that ate our
souls and caused our helpless neuroses.
We had felt that perhaps we were wrong inside, but we had never imagined
it so bad. However, in the name of healing and medicine we prepared to
accept it all. If it was all just a result of illness, we were prepared
to go through with it. The analyst promised us that the tangle of
complexes would be unravelled, the obsessions would evaporate, the
monstrosities would dissolve, sublimate, when brought into the light of
day. Once all the dream-horrors were translated into full consciousness,
they would sublimate into—well, we don’t quite know what. But anyhow,
they would sublimate. Such is the charm of a new phrase that we accepted
this sublimation process without further question. If our complexes were
going to sublimate once they were surgically exposed to full mental
consciousness, why, best perform the operation.
Thus analysis set off gaily on its therapeutic course. But like
Hippolytus, we ran too near the sea’s edge. After all, if complexes
exist only as abnormalities which can be removed, psychoanalysis has not
far to go. Our own horses ran away with us. We began to realize that
complexes were not just abnormalities. They were part of the
stock-in-trade of the normal unconscious. The only abnormality, so far,
lies in bringing them into consciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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