The Unconscious

Abstract

The unconscious is the crux of Freud’s work: anyone who claims to employ psychoanalytic methods, either in therapy, art criticism, theorizing about gender and sexuality, and in other areas, must have a grasp of it; conversely, one finds that critics of Freud are usually critical of the unconscious. It is not difficult to see why it arouses fierce opposition, for it challenges many of our common-sense assumptions about the way life is and the way human beings operate.