Seoyeon Hur (South Korea)

In this presentation, I aim to show the unconsciousness in Freud can be understood as the Unauthenticity in Heidegger. Unconsciousness is a key concept in Freud's early thought and is considered a source of psychopathic phenomena. But Swiss psychiatrist Boss criticizes Freud's concept of unconsciousness as a limit to natural-scientific thinking separating subject and object. My attempt to understand the unconsciousness based on Heidegger's philosophy will open hopefully the way for the widespread use of Heidegger's concept of Unauthenticity in philosophical counseling. The discussion proceeds in four steps as follows. 1) Freud's psychoanalysis presupposes the concept of truth as unconcealedness. In other words, human beings are not the union of the isolated mind and body as in natural science but the Dasein, who is disclosed to the world and gives meaning to other beings. 2) Freud's meaning is not related to causality, but to the temporality of Dasein. Because the 'understanding', through that the Dasein thrown by the past throws itself on the future possibilities, is the 'giving-meaning'. 3) Understanding of Dasein also indicates the freedom of the Dasein. For the Dasein is always freely present as a possibility. Here the concepts of authenticity and unauthenticity are explained as the possibilities of Dasein. 4) Freud's language is not any symbol attached to meaning. It is a way of unconcealing a concealed being in oblivion or suppression. The debate eventually converges on the unconcealedness and concealdeness, the authenticity and unauthenticity of the Dasein. It will be revealed here that Freud's unconsciousness concept can be explained by Heidegger's unauthenticity concept.