Philosophy of Science

The Freudian Turn: From Consciousness as the Object of Psychological Science to the Unconscious.

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Seyed Mahdiyar Rahimi 1
Mohammad Hossein Vafaiyan 2

1 M.A. Student in Family Counseling, University of Tehran

2 Faculty Member, School of Management, Science and Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology.

10.30465/ps.2026.53549.1807
Abstract
In the history of modern psychology, Freud appears as a thinker who stands at the point of rupture between philosophy and Kantian science, a point at which the Cartesian conscious subject could no longer be the bearer of the whole truth. This article argues that Freud’s turn from consciousness to the unconscious, rather than being a mere shift of focus from the conscious to the unconscious, is a response to the internal crisis of a psychology of consciousness and to the critique of the doctrine that identifies consciousness with the mental. This turn is deeply intertwined with Freud’s engagement with the German tradition (from Leibniz to Nietzsche) and with the physiological concepts of the Helmholtzian school.
Using a historical-philosophical method and drawing on Freud’s primary texts and related sources, the paper shows that the Freudian unconscious is neither a return to a metaphysical “soul” nor a reduction of the psyche to biological mechanisms but is instead conceived through the gaps and dysfunctions of consciousness, thereby transforming the very object of psychological science. It concludes that Freudian psychoanalysis should be understood as a radical alternative to a psychology of consciousness—one that is situated between philosophy and physiology, grounded in clinical experience and the analysis of the failures of consciousness, and that thereby makes possible a science of the unconscious.

Keywords

Freud
psychoanalysis
unconscious
science of psychology

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