... that have little to do with our conscious thoughts. Instead he proposed that awareness existed in layers and that there were thoughts occurring "below the surface." This assumption that we have an unconcious changed the way in which many people viewed themselves and also introduced different forms of therapies. According to Freud, people often experience thoughts and feelings that are so painful that people cannot bear them. Such thoughts, feelings and associated memories could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind, but could be banished from consciousness as a defence mechanism. Freud observed that the process of repression is itself a non-conscious act. Freud supposed that what people repressed was in part determined by their unconscious. In other words, the unconscious was, for Freud, both a cause and effect of repression. Freud and a close friend and fellow psychologist Joseph Breuer tried out a form of therapy on a patient known as ...

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