Three types of the unconscious

• descriptive,--the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious
  　
• dynamic,--the unconscious were a throbbing energy center, active and busy, but hidden from the Subject's conscious mind.
  • hydraulic metaphors: energy "flows," is "cathected" (attached to an object), and pulsates; repressed thoughts "build up the pressure," and at times put enough pressure on the repression barrier so as to "leak through"; desire is "displaced" or "transferred" to "relieve the tension" which the intrusion of the trauma into the unconscious has caused.

and the systematic --id, ego, superego. The American-- move toward "ego psychology"; the French --a "return to the real Freud"

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Literature and psychoanalysis:

for Freud, the story of Oedipus traces the unconscious wish of every (male) child: sexual union with the mother and a concomitant elimination of the father, so as to take his place. the "other" he seeks is in fact himself. ..notions such as "destiny," "fate," "self-knowledge," and the "other" are all interconnected as partaking of what psychoanalysis calls the unconscious.

Literature. . . like a dream, uncovering deep, otherwise invisible workings of unconscious activity.

--a text is only a symptom of an author's psychological state. At its best, such an approach will ultimately tells us something about the author (his neurosis, obsessions, traumas, and so on), but it will tell us little about the text itself.

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the conscious as the personal unconscious or the collective unconscious -- the racial memories of human past, which makes us respond to certain myths and stories in the same way.

These memories exist in the form of archetypes: patterns or images of repeated human experiences (such as birth, death, rebirth, the four seasons, and motherhood) that express themselves in our stories, our dreams

e.g. "The Uncanny"

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