a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

We have pointed out that such a crippling of the ability to recall is
characteristic of hysteria. In hysteria symptomatic conditions also arise
(hysterical attacks) which need leave no trace in the memory. If these things
do not occur in compulsion-neuroses, you are justified in concluding that
these amnesias exhibit psychological characteristics of the hysterical change,
and not a general trait of the neuroses. The significance of this difference will
be more closely limited by the following observations. We have combined two
things as the meaning of a symptom, its "whence," on the one hand, and its
"whither" or "why," on the other. By these we mean to indicate the
impressions and experiences whence the symptom arises, and the purpose
the symptom serves. The "whence" of a symptom is traced back to
impressions which have come from without, which have therefore necessarily
been conscious at some time, but which may have sunk into the
unconscious—that is, have been forgotten. The "why" of the symptom, its
tendency, is in every case an endopsychic process, developed from within,
which may or may not have become conscious at first, but could just as
readily never have entered consciousness at all and have been unconscious
from its inception. It is, after all, not so very significant that, as happens in
the hysterias, amnesia has covered over the "whence" of the symptom, the
experience upon which it is based; for it is the "why," the tendency of the
symptom, which establishes its dependence on the unconscious, and indeed
no less so in the compulsion neuroses than in hysteria. In both cases the
"why" may have been unconscious from the very first.
By thus bringing into prominence the unconscious in psychic life, we have
raised the most evil spirits of criticism against psychoanalysis. Do not be
surprised at this, and do not believe that the opposition is directed only
against the difficulties offered by the conception of the unconscious or against
the relative inaccessibility of the experiences which represent it. I believe it
comes from another source. Humanity, in the course of time, has had to
endure from the hands of science two great outrages against its naive selflove.
The first was when humanity discovered that our earth was not the
center of the universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system hardly
conceivable in its magnitude. This is associated in our minds with the name
"Copernicus," although Alexandrian science had taught much the same thing.
250