Editing Subconscious (section)

== Psychoanalysis ==
[[Sigmund Freud]] used the term "subconscious" in 1893<ref>Freud, Sigmund (1893). « Quelques considérations pour une étude comparative des paralysies organiques et hystériques ». Archives de neurologie, citation in ''Psychanalyse (fondamental de psychanalyse freudienne)'', sous les directions d'Alain de Mijolla & Sophie de Mijolla Mellor. Paris, P.U.F, 1996, p. 50.</ref><ref name="LP">{{cite book|first1=Jean|last1=Laplanche|first2=Jean-Bertrand|last2=Pontalis|author-link1=Jean Laplanche|author-link2=Jean-Bertrand Pontalis|chapter=Subconscious (pp. 430-1)|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DCpokE8C2WgC&q=Subconscious |title=The Language of Psycho-analysis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DCpokE8C2WgC|publisher=Karnac Books|location=London|year=1988|edition=reprint, revised|orig-date=1973|isbn=978-0-946-43949-2}}</ref> to describe associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume I (1886-1899) Pre-Psychoanalytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts|last=Freud|first=Sigmund|publisher=Hogarth Press Limited|year=1966}}</ref> He later abandoned the term in favor of unconscious, noting the following: {{quote|If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious.<ref>Freud, Sigmund (Vienna 1926; English translation 1927). ''[[The Question of Lay Analysis]]''.</ref><ref name="LP"/>}}

In 1896, in Letter 52, Freud introduced the stratification of mental processes, noting that memory-traces are occasionally re-arranged in accordance with new circumstances. In this theory, he differentiated between ''Wahrnehmungszeichen'' ("Indication of perception"), ''Unbewusstsein'' ("the unconscious") and ''Vorbewusstsein'' ("the [[preconscious]]").<ref name=":0" /> From this point forward, Freud no longer used the term "subconscious" because, in his opinion, it failed to differentiate whether content and the processing occurred in the unconscious or preconscious mind.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume II (1893 - 1895)|last=Freud|first=Sigmund|publisher=The Hogarth Press|year=1955}}</ref>

Charles Rycroft explains that the subconscious is a term "never used in psychoanalytic writings".<ref>Charles Rycroft, ''A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis'' (London, 2nd Ed, 1995), p. 175</ref> Peter Gay says that the use of the term subconscious where unconscious is meant is "a common and telling mistake";<ref>Peter Gay, ''Freud: A Life For Our Time'' (London 2006), p. 453</ref> indeed, "when [the term] is employed to say something 'Freudian', it is proof that the writer has not read [their] Freud".<ref>Peter Gay (ed.), ''A Freud Reader'' (London, 1995), p. 576</ref>