Key Arguments

• Freud calls this differentiation "the basic tenet of psychoanalysis" and says it alone allows understanding and scientific categorization of pathological mental processes.
• He explicitly rejects the view that the essence of the psychical can be located in consciousness, insisting instead that "consciousness" is only one quality among others that may or may not be present.
• He notes that this view functions as psychoanalysis’ "first shibboleth," anticipating that many philosophically educated readers will stop reading at this point because they cannot accept a non‑conscious psyche.
• He argues that philosophers find a non‑conscious psyche "unfathomable" and "absurd" largely because they have not properly studied phenomena like hypnosis and dreams, which empirically compel acceptance of the unconscious.

Source Quotes

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS In this introductory chapter there is nothing new to say, nor can it refrain from the repetition of what was so often said before. The differentiation of the psychical into consciousness and the unconscious is the basic tenet of psychoanalysis and alone gives it the possibility to understand the equally common and important pathological 2 procedures in the psyche and to categorize them within the science. Again, put differently: psychoanalysis cannot reposition the essence of the psychical in consciousness, rather it must see consciousness as a quality of the psychical, which must go along with the other qualities or keep apart.

The differentiation of the psychical into consciousness and the unconscious is the basic tenet of psychoanalysis and alone gives it the possibility to understand the equally common and important pathological 2 procedures in the psyche and to categorize them within the science. Again, put differently: psychoanalysis cannot reposition the essence of the psychical in consciousness, rather it must see consciousness as a quality of the psychical, which must go along with the other qualities or keep apart. If I could imagine that all interested in psychology would read this text, I also at this point would have prepared for a portion of the readers already to stop and go no farther, for here is psychoanalysis’ first shibboleth 3.

Again, put differently: psychoanalysis cannot reposition the essence of the psychical in consciousness, rather it must see consciousness as a quality of the psychical, which must go along with the other qualities or keep apart. If I could imagine that all interested in psychology would read this text, I also at this point would have prepared for a portion of the readers already to stop and go no farther, for here is psychoanalysis’ first shibboleth 3. For most of the philosophically educated, the idea of a psyche which is not also conscious is so unfathomable that it appears absurd, and by sheer logic, unprovable.

If I could imagine that all interested in psychology would read this text, I also at this point would have prepared for a portion of the readers already to stop and go no farther, for here is psychoanalysis’ first shibboleth 3. For most of the philosophically educated, the idea of a psyche which is not also conscious is so unfathomable that it appears absurd, and by sheer logic, unprovable. I believe that is only because they haven’t studied the pertinent phenomena of hypnosis and dreams, which—quite aside from just pathologically—compel such a notion.

Key Concepts

• The differentiation of the psychical into consciousness and the unconscious is the basic tenet of psychoanalysis and alone gives it the possibility to understand the equally common and important pathological 2 procedures in the psyche and to categorize them within the science.
• psychoanalysis cannot reposition the essence of the psychical in consciousness, rather it must see consciousness as a quality of the psychical, which must go along with the other qualities or keep apart.
• for here is psychoanalysis’ first shibboleth 3.
• For most of the philosophically educated, the idea of a psyche which is not also conscious is so unfathomable that it appears absurd, and by sheer logic, unprovable.

Context

Opening of Chapter I, where Freud restates the foundational status of the conscious/unconscious distinction for psychoanalysis and counters prevailing philosophical assumptions.