A Critical Evaluation of Freudian Unconscious: Repressed Memory or Memory Reconstruction?

This paper is an attempt to understand the concept of consciousness and unconsciousness with critical review of the literature and also through experimental approach. To study human behaviour and personality Freudian unconsciousness is given an important position in psychological science, even the term ‘unconscious’ has become synonymous to Freud. However, there are enough evidences that the concept was present before Freud and this unconscious state was extensively used by many scholars to deal with various psychological crises. Freudian repressed memory or past traumatic memory is being considered behind many psychopathologies by many professionals, but current literature raises question regarding the acceptability of repressed memory as truth. Concept of memory reconstruction and false memory syndrome are now coming up to question the basic assumption of many psychotherapy techniques like, Free association, hypnotic age regression, past life regression etc. Through this paper many of these issues will be unfolded with research evidences and logical processes.