Mistaken belief in “the unconscious” may lead to misinterpretation of amnesia, and failure to recognize a character’s multiple personality

Freud didn’t discover “the unconscious.” He learned about it when he studied hypnosis. Hypnotists had long known that some people had amnesia for what had happened during hypnosis. And if the hypnotized person had been given a suggestion for what to do after hypnosis, the person would do it, but not recall having been told to do so.

But if the person were hypnotized again, they would recall everything that had previously been said and done during hypnosis. Thus, what was “unconscious” when out of hypnosis, was so only from the point of view of the non-hypnotic consciousness. It was always perfectly conscious to the hypnotized mind, which, in order to make the nonhypnotized person carry out the suggestion, had to remain conscious when the person was not hypnotized.

In short, there were two simultaneous consciousnesses, but only one was aware of the other.

So why didn’t Freud recognize that there was no true “unconscious,” but only two segregated or dissociated consciousnesses? Two reasons. First, he wanted to distinguish himself from the French psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, who had already gotten credit for “psychoanalysis” that involved “dissociation” (among segregated consciousnesses). To distinguish his own brand of “psychoanalysis,” Freud coined “repression” (into the unconscious). Second, Freud, himself, had problems with dissociative tendencies (see past post with essay on Freud) and needed to avoid the issue.

Now, it certainly is possible to have amnesia with no retention of memory, such as when the memory was not recorded in the first place. But when a character in a novel has amnesia, consider the possibility that the memory is present in an alternate consciousness, an alternate personality.