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THE CARE OF SOULS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
-We shall use the term, the psychic present, to include the
mental activities of thinking, feeling, perception and effort.
These activities occur within the sphere of consciousness. They
rise from unconsciousness and disappear again.
By the psychic potentiality, on the other hand, we mean our
latent psychic powers, our talents, and the dispositions from
which our actions arise. To these may be added also our
memories and those processes within the life of the personality
which are usually called mental, although we are aware of their
existence only through our knowledge of their manifestations.
A person may be entirely unconscious of his own dispositions
and motives or he may have only a dim perception of them.
Much of our mental behaviour is in the nature of evasive
action designed to prevent us from being too clearly aware of
the real significance of what we are doing or of our less pleasant
psychic potentialities.
Something of a similar kind can be said of the psychic
present. It can be more or less conscious. We, can be acutely
aware of that which is at the focus of our attention and interest,
while other matters equally present are but dimly observed. On
the other hand, our consciousness of actually present events
can be but dimly illumined because our psychic present is
preoccupied with thought-material concerning the past or the
future.
Suppression and the Unconscious
If we include the past with its memories in the psychic `
potentiality, suppressed material naturally falls under this
heading, too. By suppressed material we mean mental events
which, like memories, were once included in consciousness and
accessible to it, but have been excluded by a deliberate act of
forgetfulness. Some of these events have been so radically
repudiated that they are far more difficult to recall than
anything forgotten in the ordinary way. This suppressed material
must be released into consciousness if mental health is to be
restored and the growth of the personality is to continue.
It has been said that Freud’s fundamental discovery was that
human personality is non-unitary.
Alongside the conscious mental phenomena there are,
according to Freud, many active instincts, desires, motives and
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