The first of the propositions which are to be rejected is the more problematic, but is the one to which critics have given less attention; this is that symbolism is the natural mode of expression of the ‘system unconscious’, a system with its own characteristics, contents, and modes of operation.

The unconscious and repression are two central concepts in psychoanalytic theory. Freud insisted that the ‘division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premiss of psycho-analysis’ (1923d, p. 13), he labelled the unconscious ‘the true psychical reality’ (1900, p. 613), and he identified repression as the‘cornerstone on which the whole structure of psycho-analysis rests’ (1914c, p. 16). As is well known, the treatment of the unconscious in Freud's writings underwent a number of changes, changes which occurred over the course of the development of his ideas, particularly with the move from the ‘topographical’ to the ‘structural’ model of the mind. Anyone who attempts to present a systematic account of these changes, and to state exactly what is involved at any particular stage of that development, soon discovers how inconsistent and confusing is Freud's material, and how difficult it is to trace the tortuous paths of the changing classifications of the unconscious (‘descriptive’, ‘dynamic’, ‘systematic’), and its relations to the conscious, the preconscious, the id, the ego, the superego, and so on.