In order to understand in a more adequate way what the unconscious is, according to Freud, it is necessary to clearly and, at the same time, simplify the definition of what is called in psychoanalysis the psychic apparatus.

With regard to our psyche¹ or soul life, two things are known, the encephalon being that part of the body that makes up our central nervous system and the center of all our actions and reactions, associated with its annexes, nerves and tendons, and our conscious acts, that is, what we practice and are capable of defining and recognizing and are within our immediate reach.

Everything in between is unknown to us. The coexistence of the different systems that make up the psychic apparatus should not be taken in the anatomical sense that would be attributed to it by a theory of brain localizations. It only implies that the excitations must follow an order is the place of the various systems (LAPLANCHE, 2001).

The Psychic Apparatus

O psychic apparatus For Sigmund Freud, the psychic apparatus or apparatus would be a psychic organization divided into interconnected psychic instances, being topographic and structural.

Freud conceives the psychism as an apparatus capable of transforming and transmitting a determined energy. The psychic apparatus would be the expression that highlights certain characteristics that Freudian theory attributes to the psychism: its ability to transmit and transform a determined energy and its differentiation into systems or instances (LAPLANCHE, 2001).

Freud supposes a principle of regulation of the psychic apparatus, called the Principle of Neuronic Inertia, where neurons tend to completely discharge the entire amount they receive, forming discharge barriers that offer resistance to total discharge.

The psychic apparatus has, therefore, no ontological reality; it is an explanatory model that does not assume any denotative sense of reality.

As the neurologist that he was, Freud was a scholar of neurons, and gave them a definition that coincided with later definitions, making him one of the pioneers in anatomical definitions of the central nervous system.

The theory of the Unconscious

O unconscious It is known that the unconscious exists, but its location cannot be defined, it is known that it is located in some seat of the psychic apparatus, but its exact location is not known, even because it is something superior to the anatomical limit.

The definitions of the unconscious are a way to understand what psychoanalysis is about and what it talks about. Among its clearest definitions are: Psychic complex of a practically unfathomable, mysterious, and obscure nature, from which the passions, fear, creativity, and life and death themselves would spring².

The Iceberg Metaphor

Our mind is like the tip of an iceberg. The submerged part would then be the unconscious. The unconscious would be a deeper and unfathomable sphere with even unreachable levels³. The Unconscious for Freud was the place unavailable to the subject It is therefore impossible to explore.

In the formation of the concept of the unconscious Freud based himself on his clinical experience and understood the unconscious as a receptacle of repressed traumatic memories, a reservoir of impulses that are a source of anxiety, because they are ethically and socially unacceptable.

As a way to facilitate the understanding of what the unconscious would be, Freud used the image of an iceberg, with the visible, smaller, superficial tip being the conscious part, accessible to the subject, scrutinizable, and the submerged, non-accessible, and presumably larger part, the unconscious. These are all the contents that are not in consciousness. They are not palpable or accessible to the subject.

Recalcitrance Processes

In the unconscious are found repressed forces that struggle to pass into consciousness, but are barred by a repressive agent It can be affirmed that neurotic symptoms, dreams, failed acts and jokes are ways of knowing the unconscious, they are forms of its manifestation, that is why speaking freely in the analytic process and the analyst's listening are the only psychoanalytic rules to know the subject's unconscious.

It is up to the unconscious to define a great part of our behavior, even though we know that there are aspects of its functioning that we are not aware of. As part of the definition given by Freud we find 3 fundamental structures in the understanding of the subject and his unconscious: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

Ego, Id and Superego

• O Id is the instance from where the "I" comes from, which is oriented by the pleasure principle, the libido.
• Already the Ego is the part guided by a reality principle.
• And the Superego is a "responsible" instance, which censors, forbids, dictates the rule to the subject.

It is worth pointing out that for Lacan the unconscious is structured as a language.

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Bibliographic references: Garcia-Roza, Luiz Alfredo, 1936. Freud and the unconscious. 24.ed. - Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed., 2009. ¹ Freud, Sigmund. Organized by Tavares, Pedro Heliodor; Morais, Maria Rita Salzano. Compendium of Psychoanalysis and other unfinished writings. Bilingual Edition - Autentica. 1940. ² Training in Psychoanalysis. Module 2: Theory of the Subject and Personality. P. 3. ³ TrainingModule 2: Theory of Subject and Personality. P. 4.

Author: Denilson Louzada