Transformation of the Concept of Psychic Reality in Freud’s Theory

The author points out a number of conceptual problems related to the uncertainty of the interpretation of psychic reality in Freud’s psychoanalysis. On the one hand, the specificity of Freud’s understanding the psychic leads to the separation of psychic and socio-cultural realities. On the other hand, Freud discovers the phenomena of the psychic in cultural activity and human communication. This paper explores the origins of the concept of psychic reality in Freud’s unfinished work, The Project of Scientific Psychology (1895). The author focuses on the change in Freud’s approach to understanding the genesis of the psyche. If in early works the problem of psychic reality was considered in the context of studying traumatic events of the past, in later works one can notice a rejection of the search for historical truth. It is noted that after discovering the negative influence of fantasies on the formation of the psyche, Freud rethought the role of cultural norms and prohibitions in human life. Freud separated experiences caused by objective circumstances from experiences related only with psychic reproduction. The author shows how Freud, in the process of researching the psychology of nations, periodically returned to the the ory of trauma. The author comes to the conclusion that the violation of the integrity of human existence, revealed by Freud during the study of the “great complexes”, led to the separation of mental reality into an independent instance with its own logic of functioning. At the same time, exploring the phenomena of the psychic in collective experience, art, religion and science, Freud constantly tried to identify the nature and essence of human. In conclusion, it is noted that the structure of Freud’s theory allows us to consider it as an anthropological project answering the Kant’s question, “what is a human being?”