An outline of psycho-analysis / Sigmund Freud ; authorized translation by James Strachey.
- Sigmund Freud
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: In copyright
Credit: An outline of psycho-analysis / Sigmund Freud ; authorized translation by James Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
15/104 page 1
![THE MIND AND ITS WORKINGS Chapter I THE PSYCHICAL APPARATUS Psycho-analysis makes a basic assumption,1 the discussion of which falls within the sphere of philo¬ sophical thought, but the justification of which lies in its results. We know two things concerning what we call our psyche or mental life: firstly, its bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system), and secondly, our acts of consciousness, which are immediate data and cannot be more fully explained by any kind of description. Everything that lies between these two ter¬ minal points is unknown to us and, so far as we are aware, there is no direct relation between them. If it existed, it would at the most afford an exact localization of the pro¬ cesses of consciousness and would give us no help towards understanding them. Our two hypotheses start out from these ends or beginnings of our knowledge. The first is concerned with localization. We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions—which we imagine, that is, as being like a telescope or microscope or something of the sort. The consistent carrying through of a conception of this kind is a scientific novelty, even though some attempts in that direction have been made previously. 1 [It will be seen that this basic assumption is a double-barrelled one and is sometimes referred to by the author as two separate hypotheses. So, for instance, in the next paragraph, and on page 17; but again as a single one on page 65.—Trans.] I](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2981487x_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
