The unconscious was a revolutionary idea, inl9th-century psychology,/which commonly asserted that the individual was an entirely

The unconscious was a revolutionary idea, inl9th-century psychology,/which commonly asserted that the individual was an entirely rational, self-conscious being./Freud suggested that because the unconscious was the source of human will, truly rational individual behavior was impossible unless the individual came to understand the unconscious wellsprings of behavior./ Freud developed psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious that relied on the analysis of dreams and other irrational phenomena, such as slips of the tongue./But because the unconscious was entirely hidden from individual conscious- ness,/the key to understanding it was the participation of another person or a trained analyst in the process of unconscious discovery./Freud’ s theory was and remains controversial./It however had a tremendous influence on art, education, history, psychology, religion, and sociology./His subsequent work on human sexuality and the structure of the mind, along with the application of his work to social and political problems, made him one of the most important intellectual figures of the 20th century./