The unconscious consists of mental content, feelings, impulses, fantasies, and experiences that are not accessible to our everyday perception. They influence us without our noticing.
The term predates psychoanalysis. Carl Gustav Carus introduced it into philosophy in 1846. Beginning in the 1890s, Sigmund Freud was the first to describe the rules governing unconscious processes, thereby making them amenable to treatment.
Traditionally, the unconscious manifests itself in dreams and slips of the tongue—such as a slip of the tongue or a forgotten appointment. Today, however, something else takes center stage: Relationship Patterns, which persistently recur even though one wants to change them. Dream analysis has lost its once-central role in favor of working on current relationships.
Depth psychology distinguishes three ways in which traumatic experiences are processed.
Conflict Pathology: An internal conflict that could not be resolved is repressed. This presupposes a personality that is fundamentally stable. Repress Only those who possess the necessary emotional resources can do so.
Structural pathology, also known as developmental pathology: Early relational experiences have impaired fundamental abilities to distinguish between emotions, tolerate them, and regulate closeness and distance. In this case, nothing has been repressed. Rather, something was unable to develop sufficiently. A person’s psychological structure is not a permanent state: it changes, albeit slowly.
Trauma Pathology: Overwhelming experiences have impaired the ability to make sense of and process what has been experienced. Memories remain unprocessed and can suddenly resurface later on.
In practice, these forms often occur together. The specific severity of the condition determines which treatment is appropriate.
A common misconception is that once unconscious content is brought into consciousness, the matter is settled. That’s not how it works. Individual interpretations generally do not bring about lasting change. The work only becomes effective when Work through, ...in recognizing the same pattern over and over again, in different contexts, until an insight becomes firmly rooted in one's own experience. Something unconscious does not disappear in the process. It changes...
In depth psychology-based psychotherapy, the unconscious remains the guiding reference point for the entire treatment. It does not need to be explicitly interpreted. The focus is on what becomes apparent in current relationships, including the relationship with the therapist, who provides a safe space for this process.
You can learn more about the process itself on our page about depth psychology-based psychotherapy.
