Preconscious

The preconscious is a defined by Sigmund Freud term used to describe a system of the psychic apparatus, which represented together with the two other systems ( the unconscious and the conscious ) his first topical model of the human psyche. The term Freud described an area of ​​the human psyche, which is not the same as in the strict sense with the system unconscious.

Unconscious content can only access the system preconscious if they can placed on the border strict censorship happen. But that happens only through transformations and disguises of unconscious psychic material. At the boundary between the conscious and the preconscious there is also a censorship that was but permeable.

Development of the concept in the work of Sigmund Freud

Freud defined these three systems as part of its first topology. Here, the preconscious is described as a region whose contents do were not identical with those of the current field of consciousness, the consciousness (and according to certain rules ) can be accessed though. In later writings of Freud, especially after the second Freudian Topik (the three psychic instances ( id, ego and superego ) were defined ), the term is most often used in the adjectival sense. This means that all those preconscious mental processes, procedures, operations and content is used, " the escape current awareness and are essentially bound to the I to the unconscious shares they belong without being completely unconscious ."

The central role that gave Freud the difference between preconscious and unconscious, is related to its definition of the unconscious together, which was not as consistently in his time, " not aware " is defined as mere absence of consciousness or as, but as a system of mental functioning which is subject entirely different laws.