{"id":13752,"date":"2026-01-06T14:53:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/?p=13752"},"modified":"2026-07-21T12:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T10:03:32","slug":"ii-7-aware-unaware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/ii-7-aware-unaware\/","title":{"rendered":"method – 7 – Conscious – Unconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conscious – Unconscious<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most delicate stages in reconstructing a family history are those in which one moves from a state of emotional detachment or indifference to a preconscious state. For example, one may know something, but it does not affect one emotionally. The message hasn\u2019t reached you yet. We are not yet conscious of what the message says. We are aware of the genocide, but not conscious of it. The preconscious doesn\u2019t hurt yet, but it already throws everything I\u2019ve built up into disarray.<\/p>\n

One lies awake at night and it thinks. Or it dreams terrible things. One enters a state of tension, as if the pores were opening and the inside were becoming permeable to the outside. An osmosis takes place between inner reality and objective reality. Freud also calls these states of the psyche \u201cthe wandering of consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sigmund Freud elaborates on the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is by no means impossible for the product of the active unconscious to enter consciousness, but this feat requires a certain amount of effort. When we try this on ourselves, we get the distinct feeling of a defense mechanism<\/i> that must be overcome. (…) Thus we learn that the unconscious thought is excluded from consciousness by vital forces that oppose its admission, while they pose no obstacle to other thoughts, the preconscious ones. (…) The unconscious is a regular and inevitable phase in the processes that constitute our mental activity; every mental act begins as unconscious and may either remain so or, as it develops, progress toward consciousness, depending on whether it encounters resistance or not. The distinction between preconscious and unconscious activity is not a primary one, but is established only after \u2018defense\u2019 has come into play. Only then does the distinction between preconscious thoughts, which appear in consciousness and can return there at any time, and unconscious thoughts, which are denied this possibility, acquire theoretical and practical value.<\/p>\n

A crude but fairly apt analogy for this supposed relationship between conscious and unconscious activity is provided by the field of ordinary photography. The first stage of photography is the negative; every photographic image must undergo the \u2018negative process\u2019; only some of these negatives, having passed the test successfully, are admitted to the \u2018positive process,\u2019 which culminates in the image.”Sigmund Freud; Collected Works, Volume III, The Psychology of the Unconscious, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, p. 33<\/p>\n

Foto@Sigmund Freud Museum: Sigmund Freud in his study at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, in 1939<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conscious – Unconscious The most delicate stages in reconstructing a family history are those in which one moves from a state of emotional detachment or indifference to a preconscious state. For example, one may know something, but it does not affect one emotionally. The message hasn\u2019t reached you yet. We are not yet conscious of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-method"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13752"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17249,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13752\/revisions\/17249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}