ground, in criticism directed towards the analyst, or in criticism of the method itself, and finally, often in a complete blocking of expression, so that until the resistance was broken nothing more could be produced.
It was necessary then to find some aid by which these resistances could be overcome and the repressed memories and feelings revived and set free. For it was proven again and again that even though the person was not at all aware of concealing within himself some emotionally disturbing feeling or experience with which his symptoms were associated, yet such was the fact, and that under proper conditions this material could be brought into consciousness. This realm where these unknown but disturbing emotions were hidden was called the “Unconscious”—the “Unconscious” also being a name used arbitrarily to indicate all that material of which the person is not aware at the given time—the not-conscious.
This term is used very loosely in Freudian psychology and is not intended to provoke any academic discussion but to conform strictly to the dictionary classification of a “negative concept which can neither be described nor defined.” To say that an idea or feeling is unconscious merely means to indicate that the individual is unaware at that time of its existence, or that all the material of which he is unaware at a given time is unconscious.
With the discovery of the significance in relation to hysteria of these varied experiences and forgotten memories which always led into the erotic realm and usually were carried far back into early childhood, the theory of an infantile sexual trauma as a cause of this neurosis de-
