SWAMI VIVEKANANDA AND SIGMUND FREUD ON THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND – II 2015 241Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture Swami Vivekananda and Sigmund Freud on the Unconscious Mind – II

Freud believed that psychologicalevents take place below the surface inthe unconscious mind, exerting a powerful influence on our thinking, feeling, and behaviour. Our feelings, motives, and decisions are actually significantly influenced by our past experiences, stored in the unconscious. While we are aware of what is going on in the conscious mind, we have little idea of the content of the unconscious. Hence, the unconscious includes what is actively hidden from conscious thought or what a person is reluctant to know consciously. It is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, painful emotions, and traumatic memories that exist outside of our conscious awareness. Through the mechanism of psychological repression, they were driven out of the conscious mind. It is precisely because they are so powerful and threatening that they are kept out of awareness. From the psychoanalytic standpoint, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects, expressing itself in the symptom. In a sense, the conscious self is an adversary of the unconscious, striving to keep the unconscious hidden. Though unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, they are capable of being tapped and interpreted by special methods and techniques such as psychoanalysis, free association, dream analysis, and verbal (Freudian) slips.8 PSYCHOLOGY In 1923, Freud then further divided the personality into a structural model of three functions of the mind, the id, ego, and superego. Here the totally unconscious id is the repository of the primitive biological instincts of bodily needs such as hunger, and the sexual and aggressive drives. The instinctual demands of the id operate according to the Pleasure Principle, following the Primary Process of seeking immediate gratification of desires. The id and its egocentric impulses are prominent in the early life of the child. Next to develop during childhood is the ego. Primarily conscious, it enables the person to deal rationally and effectively with reality. It is ‘that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. ’ Mature adults follow the acquire